


Find Me A Dragon

by cthene



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Love Potion/Spell, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23479303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthene/pseuds/cthene
Summary: “How longs?” Toki asks.Skwisgaar grips the steering wheel so hard the leather creaks. “I don’t knows,” he says. The sun is setting through the car window behind him, limning his pale hair with a halo of peachy light. “Since Florida. Since pretties much deh beginnings.”Toki enlists the services of a local witch to cast a love spell on Skwisgaar, only to be disappointed when Skwisgaar’s attitude towards him doesn’t seem to change much at all.
Relationships: Skwisgaar Skwigelf & Toki Wartooth, Skwisgaar Skwigelf/Toki Wartooth
Comments: 30
Kudos: 94





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [little_murmaider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_murmaider/gifts).



It’s so nice to have somebody to talk to about his personal life, Toki thinks. Dr. Rockso is fun to pal around with and all, but he doesn’t give the most actionable relationship advice. 

“I just don’t knows what I’s done to desoyves dis kinda treatments,” he laments, gazing forlornly across the mall food court, and nibbling on a sugarfree Red Vine.

Belinda is such a nice lady. She might be old, and a lady, but Toki feels like she really _gets_ him. “It’s not about anything you’ve done,” she says. “It’s about _him_ , and his ego. It’s not your fault. You have to remember that.” 

“Ja, I knows,” Toki sighs. He hangs his head, absently twisting a Red Vine into the shape of a heart. “But, it didn’t used to bes dis way. We used to be pals! At least… I thought we was pals.” 

“People change,” she says, covering Toki’s hand with her own. “Maybe it’s time to move on.”

“But I _can’t_ ,” says Toki. “Dis amn’t just anybody we’s talkings about. He changeds my lifes! I thought we was gonna be best friends forevers. But den deh years passes, and it just didn’t works out dat way. He just put me down and critik’cize me all deh times.”

“Toki,” says, “why do you place so much value on the opinion of someone who just wants to stifle your creativity?” 

Toki slumps in his booth. “Because he ams deh greatest guitarist in deh whole world,” he sighs. “His opinion ams deh most importants outta anyone. And everyt’ing woulds be porfect, if he wasn’t such a dicks to me.” He props his cheeks on his fists. “Whenever he _ams_ nice to me, I’s deh happiest I’s ever beens.”

Belinda shakes her head, big, colorful, polymer clay earrings tinkling like Christmas ornaments. She has a vast mane of curly salt-and-pepper hair, like the lady who sells essential oil diffusers on the Home Shopping Network. That’s how Toki knows he can trust her. 

“You know, Toki,” she says, as they’re headed out to the parking lot, about to go their separate ways. “I might be able to help you out with your situation. You see, I offer what you might call… ‘relationship services.’” 

Toki spares an anxious glance for the clutch of Klokateers who are waiting to helicopter him home. “No thanks you,” he says. “I gots involved wid’ deh match-making soyvice once befores. It didn’ts works out.”

“You misunderstand,” she says. She makes a twirling gesture with her hand, and a jet black bird swoops down out of the sky to perch delicately on her forefinger. “I’m offering to make the person you were talking about… fall in love with you.” She reaches into her bohemian-chic beaded satchel, withdrawing a white business card. 

‘Solstice, LLC: Personal Witchcraft Services’ Toki reads, turning it over in his hands. Was witchcraft one of those things regular people believe in? Or was it one of the things his fundmentalist Christian parents taught him to believe in, that later turned out to be false? Toki can’t always keep the two categories straight. “Yousa real witch?” he asks. “Whats sold yous etornals soul to Satan and everyt’ing?” 

“Sure did,” she grins. With a flick of her wrist, the bird transmogrifies into a black snake that climbs her arm and drapes itself obediently around her neck.

He brightens, impressed. “Wowee! Forsa old lady, dat’s really metal.” 

She winks. “By this time tomorrow, you could be enjoying true love with the person you’ve been pining after all these years,” she says. The snake flicks its tongue at Toki, as if to somehow reinforce the point. “So? Whaddaya say?”

Toki looks back to the helicopter, deliberating. Making Skwisgaar fall in love with him would certainly teach him a lesson. He imagines the lead guitarist following _him_ around for a change, desperately trying to get _his_ attention. The notion certainly has its appeal. “Whats you charge?” he asks. “Deh blood of deh virgins? Deh first born childs? No bullshits: I can gets you dat stuff.” 

“No!” she balks. “What the hell is wrong with you? I just want money.” 

“Oh.” Toki shrugs happily. “Well I gots plenty of dat, too!” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The next morning, Toki makes extra-sure to thoroughly wash his hair, brush his teeth, and put on a clean shirt. He wants to look and smell his best when he humiliates Skwisgaar; And besides, they have that label-mandated charity gala tonight. 

When he sits down to breakfast with the rest of the band, he’s so giddy with anticipation he can hardly finish his _laks og eggerøre_. Any minute now, Skwisgaar will walk through the door, fashionably late to a meal as usual, and their eyes will meet, and… _something…_ will happen. Belinda promised him she would cast the spell as soon as she got home from the mall, so it should already be in effect. 

To his immeasurable disappointment, however, Skwisgaar never shows up to breakfast. He has scheduled ‘solo studio time,’ apparently, which means he could be holed up in there with Knubbler all day. Toki briefly considers dropping in on them, but decides against it. Skwisgaar is supposed to be the one following _him_ around; That’s the whole point of this.

He’ll just have to be patient. 

He spends much of the day with Murderface, tuning out the bassist’s movie-pitches and playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It’s hard for him to focus on anything more mentally strenuous than scrolling through IMDb on his phone. All he can think about is what Skwisgaar’s smug face is gonna look like, when he realizes Toki has the upper hand for once. His stomach flips every time he pictures Skwisgaar pining after _his_ attention, seeking _his_ approval. Maybe even— dare he think it? —complimenting him on his guitar-playing.

That evening, Toki scans the periphery of Mordhaus’s great hall for a glimpse of dawn-colored hair. Skwisgaar usually spends these industry events standing at the edge of the dance floor, nursing a froofy cocktail and making scornful comments under his breath; He's not so much a wallflower, as a wall-cactus.

When Toki catches sight of him though, he’s nestled in an alcove with a couple of likely-looking ladies, away from the rest of the party. His long hand is curled around a stemless glass of red wine. He seems relaxed and playful, like he’s having a good time. Like he hasn’t thought about Toki all day. 

Toki’s heart sinks. Could Belinda have lied to him? She seemed so nice! And he was so sure this was going to work. He even could have sworn he’d _felt_ something was different when he first woke up this morning. But no matter how hard he stares at the back of Skiwsgaar’s head, willing him to turn and meet Toki’s gaze from across the crowded ballroom, it never happens. 

Toki goes to bed disappointed, glaring at the criss-cross of frosty scratches on Deady Bear’s plastic eyes. His heart hurts, in a way he can’t even fully explain. This whole thing was just supposed to be a lark; What exactly was he expecting? Did he think everything was going to change? 

In the early days, when he and Skwisgaar were temporarily forced to share a room, Toki had still been in the habit of praying before bedtime. A cross made out of popsicle sticks, taped to the wall above the pullout sofa where he slept, had been his only contribution to the decor. He remembers kneeling, eyes closed, hands folded in supplication, and hearing the telltale creak of springs, only to look up and find Skwisgaar smirking down at him, cheekily usurping the position of his Lord and Savior. This disabused him of the practice far more effectively than all their other bandmates’ ridicule combined. 

He doesn’t really believe the Bible anymore, at least not in any active way. But it’s embarrassing to realize how much he still believes in Skwisgaar. You’d think living with him would have killed the mystique by now; Toki’s not a kid anymore, and he’s had ample time to witness Skwisgaar’s vicious pettiness, colicky egomania, and blustering insecurity first hand. And yet, it can’t have been more than a month ago that, retiring to the green room having just played their hearts out, Skwisgaar granted him a terse little smile of approval, and it was like the heavens had opened up, and a chorus of heavy metal angels had welcomed him into Dethklok all over again.

Toki sulks through breakfast, watching Skwisgaar drink his coffee out of the corner of his eye. It’s companionably quiet this morning, as they all recover from their hangovers, scarcely bothering to speak except to grunt at each other to pass the salt. A bespectacled Nathan reads the newspaper, champing on a crusty _croque monsieur_ , as Pickles and Murderface doze over half-eaten platters of _huevos rancheros_. Skwisgaar sips primly, eating nothing. The skin around his eyes is reddish, the faintest glaze of sebum illuminating the crease of his nostril and the ridge of his brow. How does he manage to look so beatific under this dungeon lighting? And after a night of partying no less. It’s unconscionable. 

“Eugh… Toki?” he asks.

“Hah?” Toki startles. The silence that follows is underscored by the tinkling of silverware and the squelching of saliva. He holds his breath, searching Skwisgaar’s eyes. Are they starry with longing? Is it about to begin? 

Skwisgaar holds his cup a centimeter shy of his parted lips. “Yous starink at me,” he mutters. 

“Sorries,” says Toki. He crosses and uncrosses his ankles. What if their legs were to bump, under the table? Would he feel some sort of spark? 

Maybe it just takes a while. Maybe if he tries ignoring Skwisgaar, Skwisgaar’s heart will realize it’s craving him. Toki pushes the coins of banana around his bowl of oatmeal, determined not to get caught staring again. 

That morning’s group recording session proceeds as usual, with Pickles up first, and Toki up second. Nathan always says they have to get the rhythm tracks down early, to build out the ‘skeleton’ of the song, but Toki has never particularly liked this arrangement. It doesn’t seem fair that Murderface gets to go after him, once he’s already absorbed the better part of Skwisgaar’s ire. Skwisgaar himself is the last of the instrumentals, and he never seems to tire of blowing his ‘openers’ out of the water. 

A sweaty Pickles pats Toki on the shoulder on his way out of the booth, wiggling his sparse, orange eyebrows as if to say ‘good luck.’ He needs it, because the second the soundproof door closes behind him, Toki can tell it’s not gonna be his day. His stupid, fat fingers are already mutinizing against him as he stands there, fumbling to disentangle his hair from the guitar strap slung around his neck.

“Kay, babe,” says Knubbler into the talkback mic. “We’re ready when you are.” But he doesn’t look ready. He looks bored and annoyed. 

Behind him, Toki can see Skwisgaar lounging on the sofa, picking away at his Explorer in the spare moments between listening to other people’s tracks. Their eyes meet through the glass, and Toki feels a jolt in his stomach. Skwisgaar flinches, and suddenly Toki is certain of it: The spell is real. Something just _happened_. 

“Any day now, Toki,” Knubbler drones. 

“Rights,” Toki nods, his insides bubbling. He’s _got_ this. He’s about to nail this passage, inspired by this incredible, euphoric feeling. And Skwisgaar, overcome with adoration for him, won’t be able to help telling Toki what a great job he did. 

But the red light winks on, and Toki’s fat fingers have other ideas. He hits a false note early, and from there it spirals, nervousness feeding into further and further mistakes. Why does this always happen to him? It’s as if the more determined he is not to fuck up, the more he fucks up. 

“Alright,” Knubbler cuts in. “Shake it off. Take-two.” 

Skwisgaar stands up, elbowing him off the talkback mic. “No,” he says. “No more takes. Gets back in here.” When Toki emerges meekly from the booth, the look Skwisgaar gives him is absolutely withering. “I don’t wants to hears any more of dis,” he says. “Yous unlistenables.”

Toki feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. It’s not even ten a.m., and his whole day is already ruined. How did that sense of euphoria evaporate so quickly?

“You knows _why_ yous unlistenables?” Skwisgaar asks. He crosses his arms, as though waiting for Toki to answer this clearly-rhetorical question. “It’s because you didn’t prackstice,” he says, when Toki doesn’t. 

“But I _dids—_ ”

“No,” he snaps. “No more of dis.” His eyes are flashing. He’s not making fun of Toki. He’s not reveling in his own superiority. He’s _angry_. He looks to Nathan, who gives him a shrug, like ‘what do you want me to do?’

Toki’s guitar screeches, and he scrambles to unplug it, the back of his neck burning with shame.

“Dere ams comes a cortain point when it ams porsonally insultings,” Skwisgaar says wearily. “I writes all yous lines for you, and I spends deh whole afternoon teachings dem to you, and den I spends deh whole nother afternoon tryink to salvage whats you gives me in post-productions. I does all dis work so dat _you_ can sounds good, Toki. And den you comes in here, like dis, and you spits on it. You spits onto my eyeball, Toki.” 

“Alright,” Knubbler starts packing up his stuff. “Tell ya what, why don’t we call it a wrap for now, okay babe?” he asks, as everyone but Toki and Skwisgaar vacates the studio like it’s filling with poison gas. 

A brief staring contest ensues. Toki reaches to pull the guitar strap over his head, afraid to break eye-contact, like he’s been caught in a lie. 

“What ams deh point?” Skwisgaar asks him. “What ams deh point of cominks in here at alls, if yous not gonna take yous job seriouslies? Why we hasta go t’rough dis whole song and dance, hah? How abouts we skips dis part where you pretends to be a guitarist, and I just records everyt’ing myself in deh forst place?”

Toki sets his Flying V aside, blinking back tears. Skwisgaar is supposed to be in love with him, by now. Instead, he’s tearing Toki apart even more mercilessly than usual. “I don’t understands,” says Toki. “Dis amn’t how it’s supposed to be. Why’s you yellings at me?”

“Because yous playings like shits!” Skwisgaar raises his voice. He prowls closer, reddening with emotion. “Yous sloppy, and yous lazy, and you disrespeckts deh materials dat I composes for you. I don’t wanna hears yous unlistenables garbage takes no more. And I don’t wanna hears yous pat’eticks ezkuses. I wants you to be greats!” Trembling hands rise, as if to frame Toki’s face, and Skwisgaar rapidly retracts them. He takes a step backward, blinking, startled by his own words.

Toki watches him, fascinated. That jolt cuts through him again, and he can see in Skwisgaar’s eyes that Skwisgaar feels it, too. Something magical is palpably simmering between them. 

Skwisgaar sits back down on the sofa, raking his hands through his hair. His expression is pained. “Why—” he says. “Whys you starinks at me likes dat?” He tries to look accusing, but eye-contact keeps making him flinch. 

“It ams workings,” says Toki, under his breath.

“What ams workings?” Skwisgaar snaps. The spell is operating on his heart, but instead of making him starry-eyed for Toki, it appears to be causing him psychological distress. 

Toki takes a step closer. The room seems smaller and hotter than it did before. “I’m sorries,” he says, twisting his hands in front of him. “I didn’t means for it to be likes dis. It was just supposed to be likes a prank!”

“Did you fucking _drugs_ me or somet’ink?!” Skwisgaar shouts. He looks feverish. His hairline is beginning to sweat.

“No,” Toki squeaks. It’s a good thing the studio is soundproofed. He wouldn’t want to have to endure anyone’s curiosity at the moment.

Skwisgaar’s hands fold protectively over his belly. When he speaks again, his voice sounds small and lost. “Den why does I feels likes dis?” he asks.

Toki hovers, expectant. “Likes what?” he prompts. “What ams you feelings?”

“I-” Skwisgaar curls inward, looking helpless. “I don’t knows…”

Toki sits down beside him on the sofa. “But I knows,” he says. The fantasy of lording it over the lead-guitarist briefly resurfaces, but the look of confusion and pain on Skwisgaar's face tends to somewhat dampen its appeal. 

Their gazes lock, and Skwisgaar reaches unthinkingly to brush a stray eyelash from Toki’s cheek. His hand idles in the air like a hummingbird as he visibly wars with himself. Toki has seen him perform the same gesture on countless ladies, but this is not that. There is nothing remotely flirtatious about it; The look in his eyes is one of sheer terror.

Toki leans forward, their breath mingling. His heart is pitter-pattering. He assumed the spell would only affect Skwisgaar, but he can’t deny, he’s feeling something too. 

The part of Skwisgaar that’s trying to run and hide loses out to the part that can’t ignore the eyelash on Toki’s cheek, and suddenly his hand is cupping Toki’s face. And suddenly the gap between them is closing, and their foreheads are touching. The magic is as physically real and potent as the blood in their veins, and every point of contact is burning with this incomparable feeling. This spine-tingling, knee-weakening, brain-melting— _electricity_.

It only lasts about a split second before Skwisgaar tears himself away. He stands up, crosses the studio, and steps into the booth, slamming the door behind him. The soundproofing in here really is excellent, Toki thinks dumbly. Through the glass, he can see Skwisgaar throwing his head back and screaming. 

Toki watches him, catching his breath. That feeling! He wants more of it. He wants to plunge his clumsy fat fingers into Skwisgaar’s beautiful cornsilk hair, and feel that _feeling_. It was like a split second of Valhalla. 

Skwisgaar staggers out of the booth, clutching the doorframe with one hand. “Toki…” he says, sinking slightly against the wall. His tone is murderous. “What has you done?” 

Toki’s eye is suddenly drawn to counting the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. “Wells…” he hems. “I puts a love spell on you.”

“You _whats?!_ ”

“I means, not by myselfs,” he clarifies. “I hires a witch. And, apparentlies, she ams deh reals deal.”

Skwisgaar buries his face in his hands. “We gots deh clown, now dere am _witches_ — Toki, where does you finds dese people, I swear to gods—” he whispers to himself, his voice cracking with frustration. 

“I’m sorries—” Toki stammers. “I didn’t think you’d be so angries.” 

“Uncredibles,” says Skwisgaar, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You has truly out-dildos youself.”

“Don’t says dat,” Toki whines. Thanks a lot, Belinda, he thinks glumly. How come a Skwisgaar who’s supposedly in love with him is scarcely distinguishable from the _regular_ Skwisgaar? What’s the point, then? This isn’t what Toki had in mind at all. “You can’t be sayings dat!” He rubs his arm, feeling wounded. “You ams supposed to be lovings me. You gotsta be nice to me!”

“Tttch!” Skiwsgaar hisses. “It ams a loves spell, not a ‘bes nice to you’ spell. Idiot!” His teeth flash with contempt. He picks up his guitar, and starts compulsively fretting, eyes closed, chin tucked against his chest. “Undoes it,” he demands, without looking up.

Toki stands, and floats towards him, watching his fingers. The desire to touch is like an itch he can’t reach, on the inside of his skull. If he could just have another dose of that _feeling_. “I don’t know hows,” he says.

Skwisgaar doesn’t respond at first, plucking out the final bars of _Briefcase Full of Guts_. After a minute of silence, he opens his eyes, having soothed himself enough to speak again. “Dat’s oukay,” he says. “We makes your littles friend undoes it.” He racks his guitar in the stand against the wall and turns to face Toki again. 

Toki reaches into his back pocket, unfolding a semilucent slip of yellow carbon transfer paper. “She gaves me dis,” he offers. He squints at the contract, catching phrases like ‘non-refundable,’ and ‘single-use application,’ and something about a ‘magic circle.’

Skwisgaar snatches the paper out of his hands, careful not to let their fingers brush. “Heres,” he says, pointing. “It says, ‘Please allows one to t’ree business days for deh magick sorcles to close.’” He shakes the paper in Toki’s face. “Whens did you signs dis?”

“Deh day before yesterdays,” says Toki.

“Goods,” says Skwisgaar. “Dat’s a Friday. Satordays and Sundays amn’t business days, so we’s gots time.” 

“Like when you orders a package on deh Internetz?”

“Ezacktlies.” He turns the paper over. “Dere amn’t no phone number or addresses on heres. Where does she lives?”

“I don’t knows.”

Skwisgaar’s calm slips. “Well where deh hells dids you finds a witch, Toki?!”

Toki raises his hands in self-defence. “I mets her in deh shoppings mall food courts! Rights next to deh Auntie Anne’s Pretzel!” 

Skwisgaar gropes for composure. “Whats ams her names, den?” he asks. “Maybe we cans looks her up.”

“Belinda?”

“Her _full_ names.”

“I don’t knows!”

He smooths the creased carbon paper over the planes of his chest. His jaw is tense. “Thinks hards, Toki: Ams dere any other identificatings inzformations you remembers?”

Toki thinks, hard. “Wells…” he struggles. “She likes gardenings. She haves two granddaughters. She mentioneds dat she hads gones to deh shoppings mall forsa routines eye exam.” 

Skwisgaar sighs. “Alrights,” he says. “We’s just gonna hasta go back dere, and retraces yous steps.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


There’s a little trick compartment above Skwisgaar’s sock drawer where he keeps a pilfered set of keys to Murderface’s 1968 Chevy Camaro. The last time he and Toki totalled one in the course of a drunken joy ride, Murderface forbade either of them from touching any of his fleet of souped-up vintage sports cars ever again; But not before Skwisgaar’s clever fingers slipped the keys to their favorite one out from under his nose. Toki remembers the cool, wordless way Skwisgaar twirled the ring around his index finger as soon as Murderface was out of the room. Remembers gushing, ‘how did you do that?’ and sharing a laugh at the bassist’s expense. 

Why don’t they pal around like that anymore? 

Skwisgaar grabs the keys, his phone, and a wad of cash, and stands deliberating in front of his dresser before pulling out a green and gray flannel button-up and tossing it at Toki’s chest. “Puts dat on,” he orders. “We tries to looks unconspicuous.” He dons a red and black flannel, whisking his hair up into a neat ponytail and topping off the ensemble with a red baseball cap. 

Toki accepts the shirt without argument, stuffing his arms into the sleeves. How the six-and-a-half foot, natural-blond, lead guitarist of the most popular band in the world could possibly go unnoticed in a crowded shopping mall is beyond him, but he’s seen these regular-jackoff disguises work in the past. 

They spend the whole drive sitting in silence. Toki cranks his window down, letting the wind whip his hair, and trying not to stare at Skwisgaar’s profile. Eventually, he compromises with himself by staring at Skwisgaar’s elegant hands, wrapped around the steering wheel, and spends the remainder of the trip struggling to contrive of some plausible excuse for them to touch.

That _feeling_. How can Skwisgaar be so anxious to get rid of it? Is Toki really so undesirable that even guaranteed, mind-boggling, mutual pleasure is unwelcome if it has to be shared with him? 

He’s catastrophizing. Rejection stings, but it’s not as if he has any reason to believe Skwisgaar _actually_ hates him. They _are_ pals. Maybe they’ve never gotten quite as close as Toki might have hoped for in the beginning, but they’re _good_ pals. That is, assuming Skwisgaar doesn’t hate him after this whole putting-a-spell-on-him business is through.

Hopefully, they’ll be able to put this incident behind them. When Toki accidentally deleted Skwisgaar’s guitar tracks and, instead of apologizing, had the desperate nerve to try and replace them himself, he’d been certain Skwisgaar would never forgive him. But Skwisgaar simply re-recorded them— at significant personal risk, since it involved jumping out of an airplane —and never mentioned it again.

If he’s being honest with himself, _Toki_ is the one who's been collecting slights. Skwisgaar derides and criticizes him in the moment, but he has never held anything against Toki after the fact. Worse: He moves on from their spats immediately, while Toki nurses hurt feelings and workshops devastating comebacks which he never ends up getting to use. 

Toki thinks, somewhat guiltily, of what Skwisgaar said this morning; Has he been ‘disrespecting the material’ Skwisgaar composes for him? Toki hadn’t thought of it that way before; He hadn’t thought of Skwisgaar writing music _for him_ , with his particular instrumental voice in mind. Sometimes he feels like what he’s being asked to play is arbitrarily difficult, but that could just be his tendency towards defeatism. If it really is written _for him_ , and not for Skwisgaar, then that can only mean Skwisgaar really _does_ think he’s capable of rising to the challenge. And that he’s, what— Disappointed? Hurt, even? When Toki doesn’t?

The man is an enigma. When Toki’s playing is passable, he relentlessly shits on it, and threatens to record over his tracks. But when it’s really bad, he gets upset, as if, after weeks of calling all his takes ‘unlistenable garbage,’ he genuinely wasn’t expecting Toki to suck. Whenever Toki gets serious about trying to improve himself, he turns sullen, and jealous, and vengeful, as if he doesn’t actually want Toki to take any of his advice after all. But on the rare occasions when Toki is really nailing it? Is Toki just projecting his own feelings onto him, or does Skwisgaar seem to administer those precious few smiles of approval with almost as much relief and joy as Toki receives them?

There are times, almost astrological events, when they play a show, and it’s perfect. Not just technically perfect, in the sense that everyone hits all their cues, but cosmically perfect. The light is perfect. The air is perfect. The precise admixture of recreational substances in their bloodstreams is perfect. And Toki is just _so_ _on_ , and their guitars are just _so_ _tight_ , and they harmonize so completely that the rest of the world seems to fall away. At such times, Toki can even get away with teasing and improvising, and instead of shutting him down, Skwisgaar encourages it, as if he’s ecstatic for someone to join him at the top of Mount Olympus, if only for the duration of a set. And the high lasts for hours afterwards, and when he catches Skwisgaar’s eyes on him at some afterparty, or on the raucous tour bus ride back home, he seems almost giddy and nervous. Like ‘Toki, can you believe we did it?’ But the next morning, it all dissolves like a dream.

Toki wonders if Skwisgaar has ever been nervous about playing. It’s like asking if a bird is ever nervous about flying. Or maybe it’s a bit like cartoon physics. Maybe Toki would never fall, if he didn’t look down.

It’s around one p.m. when they pull into the parking lot— peak mall time —and it takes them several circulations to find a space. 

“Yous making me car sicks,” Toki moans. 

“Den gets out,” says Skwisgaar. He stops, dropping Toki on the curb. 

“I meets you at deh entrance,” Toki calls, as Skwisgaar pulls away, ignoring him. Is it the love spell that’s twisting his stomach in knots, or just the same pathetic, dead-end crush that he’s been failing to let go of for years now? Toki stands in front of the automatic doors, feeling a puff of cold air on his face each time they open and close in response to his presence. It was, naturally, super unmetal and gay of him to have assented to the idea of making Skwisgaar fall in love with him in the first place. The prospect of Skwisgaar mooning after him, even temporarily, was just too irresistible. But he should have known better— Dethklok has trained him better —and now he’s just reaping what he sewed. 

Skwisgaar appears and strolls past him through the automatic doors, as Toki rushes to follow. He looks good in that lumberjack get up, ponytail swinging behind him as he walks. He looks good in everything. He’s like a graceful, timber-cutting swan, and Toki is like an ugly gray ducking, clumsily quhzk-ing after him through the perfume department.

Just when Toki’s about to catch up with him— and wondering if he can make the backs of their hands brushing seem like an accident —Skwisgaar steps onto an escalator (which is decidedly single-file).

“So, what ams deh plan?” Toki asks. Somehow, he swears he can detect an eye roll through the back of Skwisgaar’s head.

At the top of the escalator, there’s a floor map of the mall with a directory of retailers. Skwisgaar frowns in thought, putting his finger on the little red asterisk labelled ‘you are here.’ 

“Wells, yous not gonna find her on dere,” says Toki, feeling petulant. He moves to stand next to Skwisgaar, crossing his arms. 

Skwisgaar’s mouth curves in a hint of a smile, and it’s enough to make Toki’s stomach flutter. “You wanna bets?” he asks, arching his eyebrows. His long finger slides to the right, tapping one of the numbered pink boxes. Number sixty-four is a LensCrafters, Toki learns, by consulting the key. “You saids she cames in here on Friday fors to haves her eyeballs exkamined, ja?” Skwisgaar asks.

“Ja.” Toki frowns. “Sos?”

“Sos, eugh, Docktors Watsons,” he says, in a gently mocking dumb-guy voice, “dhey ams gonna has her full names and addresses on file. And I bets you dhey don’ts gots more den one customer calleds ‘Belinda.’” 

They embark in the direction of the LensCrafters, passing some of Toki’s favorite stores, like the one that sells Rubix cubes and little RC cars. Usually, he goes shopping with a coterie of Klokateers, for security purposes, but he finds himself wishing he and Skwisgaar were here together, without an escort, just for fun. Skwisgaar never seems as impressed as Toki is by American consumer culture, but listening to him scoff at everything has its charms. 

The store is empty, except for a single employee standing at the little island register behind a computer monitor. “Good afternoon,” he says. “How may I help—?”

“Eugh, ja, sos,” Skwisgaar cuts him off, leaning on the counter. “I ams all out of, ah, you knows, dem little eyeball skins?” He crooks his finger and pantomimes inserting something into his eye.

“Okay,” the clerk enthuses. “Have you purchased contact lenses with us before?”

“Uh-huh. But I ams needings to updates my contact inzformations, fors to has dem delivereds at my new house.”

He makes a few clicks on the computer. “No problem,” he says, fingers hovering over the keyboard. “I just need your first and last name, so I can find you in our system.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Skwisgaar punches him in the face and grabs the mouse. “Holds him down!” he orders. 

Toki looks up from trying on wacky frames to see the clerk reeling, a hand over his nose. “Why didn’t you tells me dis was deh plan?” he asks, quickly restraining the man from behind. The poor dildo is scrawny, and easily overpowered. 

Skwisgaar scrolls through the open customer database, helping himself to a post-it note and a pen from the drawer. “I’s improvising,” he shrugs.

“Help! Help!” the clerk screams, before Toki stuffs a hand over his mouth. 

“Dere ams gonna be somebody comings in likes two seconds,” says Toki, scanning the walkway beyond the display windows. 

“So kicks dhey’s ass for me,” says Skwisgaar, furiously writing something down. His golden eyelashes flicker in Toki’s direction. “Yous good at it.” 

This is not the most appropriate time for Toki’s stomach to do a little somersault of arousal. As if on cue, a phalanx of security appears, and the thrashing clerk bites down, hard, on the meaty part of Toki’s hand. “Bitch-tits!” Toki cries, letting him go. 

Skwisgaar stuffs the post-it note into his pocket and runs, as Toki scrambles to follow him while squeezing his injured hand under his armpit. The walkways are dense with shoppers, and the security guards struggle to dodge them as Skwisgaar whips around a corner. His stride length is an advantage in a foot chase, but his height makes it impossible for him to disappear into a crowd. Toki tears after him, wishing they’d discussed any of this beforehand. 

At the end of the walkway, Skwisgaar jumps into an elevator and props the door open with the toe of his boot. “Hurries up,” he says. “Don’t get tasered and pisses yous pants.” 

Toki dives inside as the doors close behind him. “You thinks dis ams funny?” he asks, cradling his hand. “Dat guy bits me!” 

As soon as the doors are open, Skwisgaar is moving again. He walks like he knows exactly where he’s going. Toki jogs beside him, looking back over his shoulder. The other elevator is going to open any second now, and the tasers and nightsticks are going to be on them.

There’s a pharmacy on the first level, close to the entrance. They duck inside, and crouch on the floor behind a rack of magazines as a trio of security guards run past the window. Toki leans his face against the cool, slippery covers, catching his breath. 

“Let me sees yous hand,” Skwisgaar whispers. 

Toki holds his arm out, rolling up the green flannel sleeve. The crescent-shaped wound between his forefinger and thumb is sluggishly bleeding. 

Skwisgaar grabs a travel sized first aid kit off the shelf and tears it open with his teeth. “Sos it don’t get infecksted,” he mutters, pouring hydrogen peroxide over the back of Toki’s hand.

“Ffffft— Dat stings.” Toki winces.

“Woulds you rather gets regular-jackoffs rabies?” Skwisgaar asks. He applies a glob of antibiotic ointment and covers the wound with a wad of sterile cotton before tightly wrapping it up with an adhesive bandage. When he’s finished, he lifts Toki’s hand, features scrunching in distress, as if he doesn’t want to, but physically can’t stop himself from kissing the side of Toki’s wrist. 

Toki’s heart stutters. “Thanks,” he breathes. The pain is an afterthought. His whole arm is tingling.

A young woman appears from behind the shelf of travel sized toiletries in front of them. She’s wearing a blue employee vest and a name tag that reads ‘Mindy’ with a heart over the ‘i.’ “Are you Skwisgaar Skwigelf from Dethklok?” she asks.

“No,” Skwisgaar deadpans. “My names is ams ‘Mitch.’”

Her mouth falls open, revealing the glint of a tongue piercing. “Oh my God you _are_ him!” she squeals. “You’re my favorite guitarist in the whole world! No offense, Toki,” she adds, doing a double-take as her brain catches up with her words: “Holy shit, you’re Toki Wartooth!” She drops her voice conspiratorially. “Are you guys hiding from like, psycho fans?”

Skwisgaar stands up, removing his baseball cap. “Ja, actuallies,” he says. “Yous gotta helps us! Dhey bits poor littles Toki, heres.”

She eyes his bandaged hand with sympathy and glances backward towards the register. “Trisha,” she calls, “open up the stockroom!” She smiles at Toki. “You can exit to the parking lot through there.”

Skwisgaar stops him, with a tug on his green flannel. “We shoulds get ridda dese,” he says. He shucks the red flannel and presses it into Mindy’s hands. “Keeps dat,” he offers. 

“This is the single greatest day of my life,” she says, vibrating with excitement. She clasps the slip of fabric to her chest like a rosary. “My friends are never gonna believe it!” 

They duck behind the register, where another woman ushers them into a dusty room stacked with pallets of product and rolls of blank receipt paper. Without breaking stride, Skwisgaar snatches a packet of sugarfree Jolly Ranchers off the shelf and tosses them over his shoulder at Toki. Because shop-lifting is totally rock n’ roll, even when you have the net worth of a mid-sized, European country. For all that the other guys complain, Toki will never be the one to say that being famous doesn’t have its advantages.

Once outside, they sprint across the parking lot and climb into the car. The lemon-yellow vintage Camaro is just about the most conspicuous getaway vehicle Toki can imagine, but at least they’ll look really cool on the CCTV footage. He slumps in the passenger seat, catching his breath as Skwisgaar books it out of there and right back onto the highway. The air feels good against his sweaty face.

“Dat was crazy,” he says, unwrapping a Jolly Rancher. The red ones are his favorite, even though some people say they taste like medicine.

“I brings you wit’ me deh next time I robs a bank.” Skwisgaar is smiling. He fishes in his pocket for the post-it note, slapping it sticky-side down on the dash. “Puts dat in yous phone,” he orders. “Yous deh navigations.” 

“Okei,” Toki garbles. Inside his skull, he can hear the hard candy clinking against his teeth like glass. His heart sinks as he reads the address, rendered in Skwisgaar’s spindly, elegant handwriting. If only they could go on adventures like this more often. It’s a shame this one has to come to an end so soon. 

Once, right after he turned twenty-one, Skwisgaar took him to a dance club in west Texas, and they got really fun-drunk. Not grim, try-hard drunk, like they all get when they want to prove what big-dick rockstars they are. And not sad-drunk, like Toki started getting after his dad died. This was early-on enough in the saga of Dethklok’s meteoric rise that they were all still kind of wonderstruck about what was happening to them, and every day was a delirus, technicolor blur of orgiastic celebration. 

Skwisgaar has a raffish, horny side and an almost monklike, philosophical side, and when he’s exactly the right kind of drunk, he becomes a lofty, fever-eyed fusion of the two. That night, they’d been vaporing on about time, and birthdays, and how fast their lives were moving, and he’d placed a sweating glass of pink paloma in front of Toki, and let their fingers brush. 

But you can’t win, he’d said. You can never stand back and say, ‘hey, look what I made.’ Music is tyrannical that way: It demands your attention _now_ , because it only exists in the moment. You can’t sit there and stare at it like a painting. You can’t peruse it at your own pace like a novel. It cuts up your life into intervals that last exactly as long as they’re meant to, and not a second less, and not a second more. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The GPS takes them way out into the mountains. Skwisgaar keeps flipping the radio on and off again, as if he’s expecting to come across anything other than Christian talk shows and static. Toki naps lightly on the window sill, enjoying the scent of the cypress and pine as they become the only car on an increasingly rough and winding road.

“Your fret hands ohkay?” Skwisgaar asks him.

Toki opens his eyes. “Ja.” He does a coordination test, touching each of his fingertips to his thumb. 

“Goods,” says Skwisgaar. “Den I don’t wanna hears you usings dat as an ezkuse nots to prackstice when we gets home.” 

Toki agrees, a little sullen. On the one hand, it’s a comforting sign that everything will return to normal as soon as they’re back at Mordhaus. But on the other hand, he realizes, a part of him was still kind of secretly hoping it wouldn’t. 

Eventually, they come to a fork in the road and Toki looks down at his phone. He’s not getting service up here anymore. “I’s pretty sure we takes a lefts,” he says.

“Yous ‘pretty’ sures?” Skwisgaar asks. “Or yous sures?”

Toki balls his fists, feeling stupid. “Yes. Lefts.” Skwisgaar shoots him a sideways glance before taking the turn. It’s a dirt road, dappled with the jigsaw shadows of blue spruce trees. If they die up here, Toki wonders, how long will it take Offdensen to locate their remains?

At the end of the path, there’s a clearing, just large enough to turn the car around in. Skwisgaar parks backwards, so it’ll be easier for them to get out when they leave. A rough-hewn stone wall is built into the side of the mountain, with a flight of wooden steps that leads up towards an embankment that’s obscured by trees. Sure enough, the address number is chiseled into the wall’s foundation.

Closing the car door behind him, Skwisgaar removes the elastic from his ponytail and shakes out his hair, as Toki watches through the driver-side window. 

“Waits,” Toki calls after him.

Skwisgaar turns from the foot of the stairs, violet shadows halving his face. The forest setting makes him look even more than usual like some sort of folkloric _skogsrå_ , to excruciating effect. 

Toki jogs after him. “Before we goes in dere,” he sighs, “I just wants to says dat… I’m sorries dat I drags you t’rough dis.” He looks at his boots, pulse roaring in his ears like waves. “It seems like deh more I tries to impress you, deh more I makes a fool of myself.” 

Skwisgaar studies him, tongue bulging his top lip as he polishes his teeth in thought. “Den stops tryinks to impress me,” he says. His eyes crinkle fondly. “I’s spent my whole lifes tryink in vains to satisfies dat guy, and I woulds haves to cautions anybody else against wastings dhey’s time.”

At the top of the steps, deeply recessed among the trees, is a cabin with a smoking chimney, and a brood of jet black chickens milling about the yard in front. It’s not made of gingerbread or anything, but Toki can’t shake the feeling that things are about to get real Hans Christian Andersen on them, in the worst possible way. 

Skwisgaar knocks twice and stands back, crossing his arms. There are footsteps inside, and after a minute, Belinda appears in the doorway. Her springy, steel-gray hair is tied back with a purple scarf, and she’s holding a large wooden spoon in her hand. 

“Toki,” she says, as if she’s been expecting him. She gives Skwisgaar a smirking once-over. “This must be your friend. Come on in.”

Toki mutters some sort of greeting as they follow her inside, nerves beginning to get the better of him. They’re standing in a large, hexagonal room, with a great hearth at its center, a cast iron cauldron simmering over the fire. Bundles of herbs and chains of garlic hang from the ceiling, and the carcass of an unknown animal dangles from a hook near the far end, draining blood into a pewter dish.

Belinda pads over to the fireplace, stirring the cauldron. The air is hung with a veil of herbal vapor. “I assume you’re here about the spell I cast for you,” she says. “How’s that working out?”

“Wells, actuallies,” says Toki, bowing his head diffidently. “We cames to acks if you woulds please undoes it?”

She turns towards him, wiping her hands on her apron. “I would if I could,” she says. “But the circle is already closed.”

“Sorries but—” He picks at the bandage on his hand. “Whats does dat means?”

“It’s all there in that contract you didn’t read before you paid me,” she smiles, rolling her eyes. “A spell is a series of enchantments contained by a magic circle.” She draws a circle in the air with the wooden spoon. “If you do it right, once the circle is closed, whatever you put inside of it can’t be altered. A lot of enchantments are intended to be temporary, so you just have to let them run their course. These ones though,” she waggles the spoon at him, “are permanent.” 

Skwisgaar takes an aggressive step towards her. “ _Whats?_ ” he snaps.

“Careful, buddy,” she says. With a flick of her wrist, the spoon is a long, flashing sword. “I don’t think you wanna fight with me.” 

Skwisgaar stops, the point centimeters from his face. “Explains,” he says, watching the blade retract back into a spoon. 

“It’s a classic love spell,” she says. “No frills, no loopholes, just a good old-fashioned, poison-tipped arrow to the heart. Nasty business. Only an idiot would ask for such a thing,” she laughs. She shields her mouth with one hand, pretending to whisper. “But little Toki here, bless his heart, is kind of an idiot.” She approaches Skwisgaar, looking him up and down. “Not that you have much to complain about, Toki,” she says, crossing her arms. “I’m _used_ to having the idiots who ask me to make someone who hates them fall in love with them come running back to me after it all goes horribly wrong. But Legolas here seems fine.” She rises onto her tiptoes so that she can peer clinically into Skwisgaar’s eyes. “His personality and memories are pretty much intact.”

Skwisgaar pales. “Ehhmm… Why woulds dat _not_ be deh case?” he asks.

Belida gives a theatrical wince of sympathy. “Well, when an idiot asks me to cast a love spell, it’s usually on someone they barely know, or someone who has zero interest in them,” she explains. “See, if they thought they had a chance with the person, they wouldn’t have hired a witch.” She throws her hands open, shrugging broadly. “It’s a bit of a monkey’s paw situation though, because the less likely the person is to fall in love with them organically, the more the spell will have to make up out of whole cloth, which could require drastically altering their personality and memory to fit. Sometimes, it basically scoops their brain out, and turns them into a sort of grotesque love-zombie.” She tucks a flyaway coil of hair back under the purple scarf. “What idiots don’t get,” she says, “is that you can’t really have a love with no content. It’s like eating a bowl of pure table sugar with a spoon: Nauseating.” 

“I thoughts we was friends,” Toki pleads with Belinda. “Why woulds you pretends to be my friends just to fucks wid’ me?”

“Toki, Toki,” she says. “It’s nothing personal. You’re a nice young man and everything. It’s just that, you’re a fatal combination of very rich, and very dumb. And being a mistress of Satan just don’t pay the bills like it used to.” She plucks a sprig of dried herbs from one of the hanging bundles and returns to her cauldron, tossing them in. “Anway, I promise you, it’s not that bad,” she says, waving him off. “When people come to complain, it’s usually because their would-be lover got the old Cupid’s bow lobotomy.” She waggles the wooden spoon back and forth between the two of them. “But this looks to me like the rare love spell gone-right! I did some really gorgeous, subtle work here,” she says. “You both oughta appreciate it.” 

“Deh fucks yous talking about?” Skwisgaar seethes. “You puts a fuckings curse on me! Whys woulds I appreshkiates dat?” His eyes are huge. He looks like he might start hyperventilating. 

She tastes the pot, before adding a crack of pepper, and a handful of coarse salt. “A good love spell,” she says, “is like good plastic surgery: Less is more. You wanna enhance what you’ve already got. In your case,” she pokes the center of Skwisgaar’s chest with her spoon, “there was already plenty to work with. Everything you need to give it the texture and richness of real love, with only a few minor adjustments to your personality.”

“So den,” says Toki, massaging the back of his neck, “dat’s why he still ams means to me?”

She grins. “That’s what’s so great about this one,” she says. “There’s no contradiction in his psyche between falling madly in love with you, and finding you totally infuriating and annoying. So, none of that stuff had to be cut out. For a satisfying, realistic love, you wanna preserve some resistance. Like that idiotic competitiveness— That’s your salt right there, that’s what gives it character.” She kisses her fingers like a chef. “You actually came up with a really elegant application for this spell, Toki. Your buddy Lestat here has been minimally, and yet very powerfully, enchanted by it.”

“ _Ohnos_ ,” Toki groans, burying his face in his hands as he begins to realize what he’s done. The idea of tampering with, even potentially _destroying_ , Skwisgaar’s personality makes him want to throw up. “I’m sorries—” he gasps. “I shouldn’t have aksed for dis! Whats have you _dones_ to hims?”

“Just a few straightforward enchantments,” she says. “Undying devotion, scorching attraction, an overwhelming sense of total completeness— You know, the fundamentals. Aside from that, he’s pretty much the same.” She turns back to Skwisgaar. “Now _that’s_ a scowl,” she says. “They teach you that in modeling school, Hans?” 

“You undoes it,” says Skwisgaar quietly. “Or I fucking kills you!” he screams. 

“I already told you,” she says. “I can’t. The circle is closed. And the fact that it’s such quality work— if I do say so myself —makes it even more impossible to undo. There are no snags I can pull on, no errors; It’s just a seamless, closed circle.” A swish turns the spoon into a wrought-iron fireplace poker, which she uses to prod at the logs on the hearth. 

If Skwisgaar were a witch, the look on his face would probably be sufficient to set her on fire. “No- No,” he refuses, growing breathless. “You can’t just leaves me like dis. What deh fucks you ezpecks me to do?”

“If I were you, buddy,” she laughs, “I’d go out there and start enjoying the authentic true love experience that I just paid top dollar for. Because that circle is _never_ going to budge.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Witches, man. 

Toki emerges into the clearing, stunned. What a rug-pull. His insides feel like they've been vacuumed out. 

There’s nothing worse than realizing your parents were right about something.

Skwisgaar comes storming down the wooden steps after him, striking the forest floor like a lightning bolt of vengeance. The treetops shake with scattering birds, and before Toki can say anything by way of apology or explanation, Skwisgaar throws him against the side of the car, pinning his wrists and jamming a tongue into his mouth. “No—” Toki flinches when he feels Skwisgaar reaching for his waistband. “Please, don’t.” 

“Whats?” Skwisgaar pants, incredulous. “ _You_ dids dis. _You_ wanteds—” 

“Not here,” Toki implores him. “Not likes dis.” 

Skwisgaar’s grip loosens. “Fines,” he spits. He slumps against Toki’s body, his frantic pulse evening out as he sighs helplessly into Toki’s hair. The spell is not going to _actually_ force them to have sex, Toki realizes with some relief; It’s just strongly encouraged. He can only imagine the nightmarish results of casting such an enchantment on someone less sexually indiscriminate than Skwisgaar, but in his case, outright coercion was evidently deemed unnecessary. Or at least, only necessary up to a point. “Chhkk!” Skwisgaar nuzzles against him angrily, like he’s trying to stop himself but can’t. 

“I’m sorries,” says Toki. “I didn’t means for dis to happens!”

Skwisgaar’s face is pressed against his neck. That feeling, that electricity, is pouring through them. Toki leans against the car for support, his legs weakening beneath him. “I loves you,” Skwisgaar sobs. 

“I knows,” says Toki. “You _has_ to.” 

“No,” says Skiwsgaar. He slams his fists against the roof of the car on either side of Toki’s head. “Dat amn’t what I’s saying.” His voice is frantic, and hoarse with frustration. He crumples, whispering against Toki’s hair. “I’s _always_ loved you.” 

Toki’s heart skips. 

“And I hates it,” says Skwisgaar. He’s shaking. “I has tried to stops it. But now dat you puts dis fucking curse on me, I amn’t nevers going to be able to stops it.”

“I’m sorries,” Toki repeats, for lack of anything else to say. 

With great effort, Skwisgaar rips himself away and stomps over to the driver’s side of the car. “I hates you,” he says. His eyes are shimmering with angry tears. “You stupid dildos idiot. Yous ruined me. Just likes you ruins everyt’ing.” He climbs in, slamming the door behind him. 

Toki slouches against the side of the car, dragging the toe of his boot in the grass. How to reconcile the sting of Skwisgaar’s words with the afterglow of that glorious feeling? He feels like he’s looking down at himself from the sky, watching himself from far above, like a little doll inside a shoebox diorama. They sit like that, for several minutes, as the shadows of the blue pine lengthen, until Toki finally opens the door and climbs into the passenger seat. 

Skwisgaar grips the steering wheel, violently thrashing back and forth for a few seconds, before slumping over and resting his forehead against it. He stays like that, hair curtaining his face, shoulders heaving, as he catches his breath. “Okei,” he pants. “Fucks. Okei.” 

“Ams you gonna be alrights?” Toki asks. 

“Ja,” says Skwisgaar. He raises his head. His face is flushed pink, eyes blinking rapidly. “Okei,” he repeats. He takes the keys out of his pocket and puts them in the ignition. Moving mechanically, he starts the car, talking out loud to himself. “Calms down. Calms down. _Amor fati_.” The car judders as he pulls out of the clearing, suspension bouncing over the bumps in the trail. 

Toki waits ‘til they’re on smoother ground before venturing to speak again. “Whats we gonna do now?” he asks meekly.

Skwisgaar snorts. “Whats deh fuck you t’inks? Goes home.”

“And den whats? Everyt’ing goes backs to normals?” 

“How deh fuck woulds anyt’ing be normals? You puts a curse on me, Toki! Dat amn’t normals!” 

Toki bows his head and traps his hands between his thighs. “Well, whats we gonna tells everyone when we gets home, den?” he asks. 

“ _We_ , Toki?” Skwisgaar yells. “Dis ams _your_ fault! You can tells peoples whatever deh hells you wants, I don’t gives a shits!” 

They lapse into silence again, until they reach the highway. The scents of pine and cypress recede, giving way to the bitterness of exhaust fumes. Toki scratches at his injury, his palm sweating under the bandage. There’s just one last thing he wants to understand:

“You said you wants me to be greats,” he murmurs. 

Skwisgaar’s eyes flick towards him, before returning to the road. 

“Ams dat what you beings… in loves wid’ me… _ams?_ ” 

He doesn’t answer. They move under an overpass, the sun cutting out for a second, and then coming back, like the strobe-light effect in some of Dethklok’s videos. Instead of retracing their trip in reverse, the Camaro swerves, taking a sudden, unexpected exit.

“I thought we was goin’ home,” says Toki, watching the highway disappear in the rear-view mirror. His belly leaps with excitement and dread. They’re improvising again. 

Skwisgaar glares at the horizon. “Nots yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please direct all complaints to user little_murmaider. This story is her fault. 
> 
> At the same time, please direct all accolades to the comment section below.


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as they’re close enough to civilization to get a decent signal, Skwisgaar tunes the radio to some garbage top-forty station and cranks the volume up so high it makes Toki’s teeth hurt. At first, Toki is determined to bear his just punishment with fortitude; But just two and a half hours into this, he cracks. 

“I hasta takes a piss,” he complains, as Skwisgaar pretends not to hear him over some turgid, sloppily-arranged thrash metal song of the sort you ordinarily couldn’t pay him to listen to. With a surge of frustration, Toki reaches over and switches off the radio. The sudden quiet feels chasmic. “Pulls over, I hasta takes a piss,” he repeats.

Without acknowledging him, Skwisgaar takes the next exit. He parks the Camaro along a scenic cliff side with a couple of picnic tables and a grill overlooking the blue pine-covered valley, and crosses his arms like ‘go ahead, I’ll wait.’ Toki gets out of the car and walks up to the metal railing, glancing around to make sure there’s no one there to see him unzip, and pees off the side of the mountain. 

“Where’s we going?” he calls back towards the car, once he’s finished. 

Skwisgaar rifles through the glove compartment and emerges with one of Murderface’s cigarettes dangling between his lips. He stands next to the open car door, planting one foot on the seat like a sea captain, and squinting into the bluegreen distance. It takes him a long time to answer: “I hasn’t decideds yet.”

Toki leans his back against the railing, and they stare at each other from across the picnic area. There’s a nice breeze up here. It’d be a great place to hold a picnic, under different circumstances. “I knows yous real mad at me,” he says, slowly, “and I knows I desorves it, but…” 

“But?” Skwisgaar prompts, after a trill of lighter clicks. 

Toki winces. “I guess I don’t really haves a ‘but.’”

The smoke blows backward, leaving Skwisgaar’s mouth like a stream of bubbles under water. “We can’t goes home yet,” he says. “I needs to makes a plan forst.” 

Toki drifts towards the car. “A plan?”

The wind picks up, and Skwisgaar puts both feet on the ground. “I could haves you kicked outta deh band,” he says hoarsely. “Replaces you. Never sees you agains. Removes deh distractions entirelies.”

Toki opens his mouth to protest, but all that comes out is a little croak of panic.

“But I amn’t goings to does dat,” says Skwisgaar. He turns to face Toki fully, the wind sweeping his hair forward. “You puts me at deh fucking crossroads, Toki. Dere ams only two ochkpins: I can cuts dis off, right now.” He lifts one finger in the air. “And haves you kicked outta deh band. Or, I can goes back home wit’ you and resumes business as usuals,” he lifts a second finger, “ _knowings_ , full-wells, dat it ams inevitably gonna leads to—” He exhales through his nose. “And I’m decidings to goes forwards wit’ deh second ones. You understands what I’s sayings?”

Toki nods glumly, struggling to hold back the vomit of pleas and excuses he knows will only make matters worse. He’s not going to be kicked out of the band, which is all that matters. It’s time to quit while he’s ahead, and surrender to whatever judgement short of citizen’s band-firing Skwisgaar has in mind.

The sky is just beginning to darken. Skwisgaar finishes his cigarette and climbs back into the driver’s seat, scarcely waiting for Toki to get in the car before backing out. Mercifully, he doesn’t switch on the radio.

“You hungry?” he asks, once they’re back on the highway. His anger seems to have cooled. He looks tired and pensive. 

Toki checks his phone. It’s just after six p.m. He nods.

“Let’s have some dinners, den,” Skwisgaar says. 

Toki studies the part of Skwisgaar’s hair in the rear view mirror. He knows he should keep his mouth shut. It’s just that… “I just don’t understands,” he sighs. “You acts pretty much deh sames. Yous mad at me, den you gets all quiets. Den you moves on to deh next thing, like nothings even happened. Like you don’t really cares. Dis ams it? Yous really in loves wid’ me?”

It makes sense, if as Belinda said, all the ingredients were already present. Hardly anything had to change. It’s just so hard for Toki to wrap his mind around. 

“How longs?” he asks.

Skwisgaar grips the steering wheel so hard the leather creaks. “I don’t knows,” he says. The sun is setting through the car window behind him, limning his pale hair with a halo of peachy light. “Since Florida. Since pretties much deh beginnings.”

Toki feels like crying, but almost in a good way. All this time, all those unguarded looks. He wasn’t reading too much into them. His most extravagant wishful thinking was actually correct. “Why didn’t you says anyt’ing?” he asks. “From deh beginnings… I felts deh sames.”

Skwisgaar’s throat twitches like he’s swallowing a pill. “Why didn’t _you_ says anyt’ing, den?”

“Oh, I’m sures bigs-dick early-Klok you woulda takens dat real wells,” Toki retorts. “I’m sures if kids-me had throwns my Bible in deh garbage and acks you to be my boyfriends, you wouldn’t haves lefts me back in fuckings Tampa wiffs no money and no paperswork.” 

Skwisgaar shrugs, as if to say ‘fair enough.’

  
  
  
  
  
  


They stop at a Dimmu Burger off the highway, and Toki tucks into a Double Baconatrix combo meal with a large sugarfree Melonade and a basket of shoestring fries. “Yous really nots gonna eats nuffin’?” he asks. “I hasn’t seen you eats anyt’ing since…” 

“Since Fridays nights.” Skwisgaar takes a sip of his bottled water, compulsively screwing and unscrewing the cap. “When I suddenly starts to feels weirds. Which I now realizes coincides wit’ you castings a fuckings magicks spell on me.”

Toki frowns, chewing. “You gotsta eats somet’ing at some points,” he mutters around a mouthful of burger. He parses the grease patterns in the paper wrapper, feeling a stab of guilt. “Whats exactallies… ams it doings to you?” he asks. “Whats you feels like right now?”

Instead of answering this, Skwisgaar pointedly starts helping himself to Toki’s fries. They’re alone on this side of the restaurant, at a booth in front of the window. Shouldn’t they be— Toki’s not sure —talking things out?

“You still gots dat paper she gaves you?” Skwisgaar asks, several fries deep. They didn’t have sugarfree ketchup, so there’s nothing to dip them in, but he doesn’t seem to mind. 

Making quick work of his burger, Toki wipes his hands with a napkin and pulls the folded contract out of his pocket. “I guess I should… akchuallies reads it,” he says, smoothing the thin paper out on the table. The first part reads like legal jargon, and he doesn’t understand much of it at all. But his eye is drawn to a diagram of a circle near the bottom, with three runic symbols inscribed within it. This particular love spell, according to the explanatory caption below, ‘is extremely simple, and extremely powerful, consisting of three distinct but mutually reinforcing enchantments: 

i) emotional attachment

ii) physical attraction

iii) psychological wellbeing 

The subject of these enchantments is guaranteed to fall hopelessly and irreversibly in love, with results including, but not limited to: 

a) profound feelings of wholeness, fulfillment, contentment, belonging etc. 

b) a sense that subject and client have been brought together by destiny 

c) a desire for lifelong romantic commitment

d)...’ 

Toki skims over the rest. “It sounds so nice, on papers,” he sighs. He takes a sip of his Melonade. Too much ice.

Skwisgaar grabs the paper, reading the same passage with visible distress before stuffing it into his pocket. “I keeps dis,” he glowers. 

Toki relinquishes it without argument. “Is we going home after dinners?” he asks. It’s already dark outside. 

“No,” says Skwisgaar. He rests his chin on the top of his water bottle. “I still needs to makes a plan.”

“I thoughts deh plan was to just goes home and pretends like dis never happeneds,” Toki mopes.

Skwisgaar plucks another french fry from the pile, twirling it demonstratively. “And den what?” he asks. “I’s gonna lives deh rest of my lifes knowings dat at any moment, I could simplies reaches out and...?” His hand opens. He closes his eyes, struggling to complete the thought. “Wells, you read all dat stuffs!” he says, reddening. “I’s just gonna know dat’s dere, and _never_ reaches for it? Toki, dat just amn’t realisticks.” He eats the french fry, washing it down with a swig of room temperature water. “Obviouslies, I ams gonna, you knows.” 

Toki doesn’t know. 

Skwisgaar shudders. “Gives in, at some points,” he says. “Might as well cuts to deh fuckings chase.”

Toki’s pulse quickens. “Den… what’s you sayink?”

“I’s sayings… dat we’s gotta deals wit’ dis. We can’t just ignores it, because dat amn’t goink to warks. We gots to makes a plan. You knows, sets some ground rules,” says Skwisgaar. He leans back in the booth, his long legs encroaching on Toki’s side under the table. It’s distractingly tempting to brush against them, but Toki values his life far too much to try it. “Sos: numbers one, we speaks of dis to no one,” Skwisgaar says gravely. “We ackts normals, we goes about business as normals. I amn’t prepareds to torns my whole life upside downs just because yous an idiots.” 

“Ja,” Toki nods. “Dat’s fair.” His heart is pounding waiting to hear the ‘but.’

“And you can’t be sittings nexts to me no mores.” Skwisgaar points at him.

“But dat _wouldn’t_ be acksting normals.”

“Especiallies not in deh hot tubs.”

“What abouts at deh tables, what ifs I walks in and all deh other chairs ams takens?”

Skwisgaar sputters, “Yous missings deh points! Deh points ams, don’t be touchings me!” He closes his eyes, quietly shuddering again. “I don’t knows if I woulds be ables to. Conceals my reactions. In front of others peoples,” he admits. He crushes and uncrushes the side of the water bottle with his thumb. “Sos,” he says. “To reiterates: We’s gonna go back homes, and resumes business as usuals. But— because it amn’t goings aways, and because I can’t reasonablies be ezpeckteds to ignores it forevers…” He sighs. “I propose dat we arranges to periodicallies, eugh… indulges dis in private.”

“In others words,” Toki sulks, “you fucks me, and den ackts like you hates me deh rest of deh times. Greats.” He pulls the plastic top off his cup so he can chew on the ice. 

Skwisgaar rolls his eyes. “Dat’s not what I’s saids, dildos. And I _don’t_ ackts like I hates you. Yous such a baby.”

Toki knows he shouldn’t push his luck— especially when he’s so _clearly_ in the wrong —but it’s like a reflex. He _has_ to prod. He wants _in_. 

Skwisgaar finishes his water, and places the bottle upside down on the table, balanced precariously on the cap. “It feels like yous _pullings_ ons me,” he says softly. 

“Huh?” Toki catches the bottle as it falls over and rolls towards the edge of the table. 

“You aksed what it feels like,” says Skwisgaar. He lowers his gaze, addressing himself to Toki’s crumped straw wrapper. “It feels like every part of you ams pullings ons every part of me. Like gravities. Like yousa fuckings planet.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


They buy sweatshirts and hats at a rest stop with the logo of some random American football team on them, and check into a crappy hotel under fake names. Skwisgaar pays in cash, and Toki can’t tell if the weird looks they keep getting are because people recognize them, or because people read a couple of cagey Europeans with no business staying in a place like this as human traffickers or something.

There’s something kind of fun about slumming it— or there would be, if there weren’t such tension between them right now. It reminds Toki of the old days. Though, the crappy hotels they stayed in back then had seemed impossibly luxurious to him at the time. He remembers being in awe of the little shampoo bottles, the television sets, the sheer number of pillows. 

They get separate rooms, which is disappointing, but not surprising. They haven’t had any reason to share a room in many years, and if someone _did_ recognize them, it’d look suspicious. Still, Toki can dream.

He flops down on the bed, flipping through the channels and settling on a nature program before pulling out his glucose meter and administering his insulin shot. It’s got pandas in it, which Toki likes. He remembers thinking, when Nathan first introduced the idea of wearing the corpse paint, that it made them all look a bit like pandas. He also remembers that his bandmates were none too impressed with this observation.

After rebandaging his hand in the tiny, airplane-style bathroom, he lies on top of the covers, fully dressed except for his boots. What a day this has been. So much happened, so fast, and he doesn’t have any clue where it all leaves them, or what’s going to happen tomorrow. 

It’s only just now starting to dawn on him what a truly monstrous thing he’s done. He curves a pillow around the back of his head, covering his ears, as if to block out any self-critical thoughts. How much worse this could have been! He can’t get the horrible image of a zombified Skwisgaar out of his brain. And even in this, the best case scenario: How selfish is he, for wanting this? The very person he has always admired for his singular creativity, his silent, sphinxlike independence, his effortless, self-contained and self-creating mystique— cornered, trapped, laid bare. The mystery dissolved. Whatever genuine feelings Skwisgaar has secretly harbored for Toki all these years, this is not a remotely sane or normal way for Toki to learn about them. 

And yet.

Guilt troubles him, but it does nothing to dampen his desire. He _wants_ in, he wants to be the _only_ one let in. He wants the most arrogant, and talented, and enigmatic, and dazzling person he has ever met to _belong_ to him. 

The first time Toki ever seriously, consciously thought about pinning Skwisgaar against a wall and kissing him, is a less than agreeable memory. He’d been sitting in front of the fireplace, working on a massive floor puzzle of the Fra Mauro map of the world, when Skwisgaar had looked up from strumming to blithely point out exactly where the piece Toki had been struggling to place for the past hour belonged. The pinkish glow of Skwisgaar’s hair in the firelight, the smirk in his eyes, the way he’d stopped what he was doing and deigned to pay attention to something _Toki_ was interested in, one of his stupid kid-hobbies, just for a second— A terrible feeling had taken hold of Toki then, a burning combination of annoyance, and resentment, and envy, and longing so sudden and terrible, that he would have attributed it to demonic possession, if he’d still seriously believed in such things. His parents had taught him, and his bandmates had only reinforced, that to want another man in such a way was something he ought to be deeply ashamed of. And he could have cried, for how much he wanted Skwisgaar then; Wanted to have him, wanted to be him, wanted to swallow him whole, as Zeus swallowed Metis, in order to gain his power.

There’s a knock on the door at around one a.m., when Toki is half asleep, and half watching a documentary about the destruction of the rainforest in Sumatra. He groans, not wanting to move from his comfortable position, a stack of pillows propping up his drooping head. The knock sounds again, and he slides off the bed, the hem of his shirt riding up as he drags himself across the mattress. He scratches at his belly, yawning and squinting blearily into the peep hole. 

Well, who was he expecting? A spike of adrenaline shakes him awake. 

Skwisgaar waltzes in, a fifth of vodka dangling in his grip, and topples over onto the bed. “Can’t sleeps,” he mumbles, face down, into a pillow. 

“Umm… Hi?” says Toki. He mutes the television, and walks around to sit down on the other side of the mattress.

Skwisgaar rolls over and gazes up at him. His eyes are appealingly unfocused, his hair arrayed like a halo around his tired head. “Hi,” he says, as Toki pries the bottle from his unresisting fingers and puts it aside on the nightstand. 

“Did you drives to deh liquor store off deh highways?” Toki asks. The bottle is still substantially full, he notes, with some relief. 

“Mmmn…” Skwisgaar hums. “Ja.” He stretches like a big cat, and kicks off his boots. His eyelids flutter, mouth opening wide in a silent yawn. 

“Is you drunks?” 

“Not reallies. Just tireds.” He closes his eyes. “Maybe a littles.”

Toki lies back down, regarding him with awe, watching the play of blue light from the television across his face. He can feel Skwisgaar’s weight depressing the springs. The sudden warmth of another body beside him is exhilarating. “Ams you gonna sleeps here?” he asks.

Skwisgaar doesn’t answer, and for a minute, Toki assumes he’s fallen asleep already. Eventually, though, he opens his eyes and extends his hand, palm up, across the bed. “Dis ams an ezkperiments,” he says. 

Toki bites his lip, unsure how to proceed. Skwisgaar’s fingers are uncurled in what looks like an invitation, though to what, Toki has no idea. He reaches out, stroking the center of Skwisgaar’s palm. The skin is warm and dry. He traces his fingertips across Skwisgaar’s fingers, from palmar-digital crease to callouses. The right one isn’t Skwisgaar’s natural fret hand, Toki knows, but he has trained himself to ambidexterity.

Their eyes meet, and Toki shivers, feeling that same jolt in his belly. Skwisgaar’s pupils are dilated, goosebumps rising across his skin. He makes muted, helpless little noises as Toki traces the veins of his inner arm, from the crook of his elbow, back down to the gush of bright blue at his wrist. 

“You likes dat?” Toki whispers.

Skwisgaar closes his eyes, nodding against the pillow. His breath comes out in long, shuddering hushes. The muscles of his throat flutter, lips pressing together as if he’s fighting to stifle himself. He’s succeeding, to the extent that he’s being very quiet, giving only little, breathy noises of pleasure that wouldn’t carry far in Mordhaus’s vast halls. 

When Toki’s wandering fingers find their way to Skwisgaar’s scalp, Skwisgaar’s whole long body arcs towards him, taut with energy, like a bow being strung. He squirms as Toki finger-combs his hair, his voice subdued, but his movements jerkily irrepressible. 

Cautiously, Toki’s arms encircle Skwisgaar’s upper body and he rolls to bring them chest to chest, with Skwisgaar lying on top of him, his face disappearing into the crook of Toki’s neck. Skwisgaar absolutely _melts_ against him. The weight of his body feels wonderful, the press of his ribcage expanding and contracting, the pounding of his heart. “Das feels good?” Toki whispers into his hair. The thrill of watching _the_ Skwisgaar Skwigelf unravel under his petting has rendered his voice lumpish and hoarse. 

Skwisgaar’s hands curl around Toki’s waist, his breath shortening, and it takes Toki a good minute to realize he’s crying. “Oh nos,” Toki says, “I can’t— I can’t tells if dem ams good tears or bad tears.” He rubs the center of Skwisgaar’s shoulder blades, and he can feel the thumping heartbeat there too.

Their legs tangle as Skwisgaar rocks them, senselessly nuzzling Toki’s neck. He can’t seem to get close enough to satisfy the powers that compel him, squeezing Toki’s body with all his strength. With a quiet sob of frustration, he lifts his head, a veil of golden hair brooming across Toki’s face as he buries his nose in the center of Toki’s chest. “Åhhh—” Skwisgaar gasps, “åh, åh nej, älskling, snälla—” 

Toki gathers the hair to one side, and strokes his lips over the part, over the bright crack of Skwisgaar’s scalp. He can smell the cypress and argan oil of his five-hundred dollar Swiss shampoo. The heat, and the scent, and the rumbling of Skwisgaar’s deep, quiet voice send his whole body tingling. He doesn’t care that what he’s done is wrong. It’s worth it, to be held like this. It’s worth it, to finally feel wanted like this. He feels more than wanted. More than paid-attention-to. He feels… _adored_. And it’s intoxicating. 

“I loves you, too,” he says dreamily. “Don’t cries.” 

They lie like this for a long time, until he feels Skwisgaar’s pulse normalizing, his breath slowing to a meditative ebb and flow. “Toki,” Skwisgaar says, after Toki’s become falsely convinced he’s asleep for the second time. “Toki, whats I’ms gonna do?” His voice is soft, and clotted with emotion. 

“You don’t hasta do nuffin’,” says Toki. “Just relaxes. Goes to sleeps.”

Skwisgaar is scarcely audible now: “I’m scareds.”

“It’s okei,” says Toki. “Yous just overwhelms.” He tilts his head back, basking in the attention. “I ams toos.”

At this proximity, Toki can actually _feel_ Skwisgaar’s ‘pffft—’ of disdain against his neck. “Yous not deh one cursed, Toki,” Skwisgaar retorts.

Toki stills, caught in his carelessness, again. “Sorries,” he says. “I’m sorries.”

“No yous not.” Skwisgaar lifts his head, propping his chin on Toki’s sternum and looking him in the eye. His eyes are glassy from crying. “Yous not sorries.” The light behind him changes, turning his pale hair blue, then green. 

The darkness of unfamiliar rooms at night is gritty and pixelated, prickling with spooky potential energy. That’s why Toki likes to sleep with the TV on, when they stay in hotels. It makes a good night light. “I feels guilty… dat I don’t feels more guilty,” he says, deciding to be honest. “I know it ams fuckeds up dat you has to loves me, like dis. But it still makes me so happies.”

Skwisgaar hums in thought. “Whats you wants me to tells you?” he asks. “Dat you amn’t dones nothin’ wrongs? I’s not goink to tells you dat.” He reaches for Toki’s hair, frowning as he threads it between his fingers, like he’s considering a fabric sample. “At deh same times,” he says, “I don’t really wants to listens to you apolgesecks. What ams deh points? You can’t undoes what yous done to me, so dere ams no choice but to lorns to lives wit’ it.” Slowly, like he’s not sure he wants to commit to it until the very end, he slides forward and gives Toki a warm, closed-mouth kiss on the lips. “I didn’ts know you wanteds dis froms me, Toki,” he says. “But I guess it ezkplains a lotta things.”

Tears prick at Toki’s sinuses, and he’s not even sure why. “I’s wanteds you,” he says, “since before I even knew what it really ams to wants somebodies. You starteds things, in me. Good things, and ugly things, boths.” He squeezes the tears away, whispering: “Yous my favorite porson in deh whole worlds.”

“Pffft, obviouslies,” Skwisgaar smiles, preening in a sort of exaggerated, self-mocking way. “Who else ams evens a candidates?” He bows to kiss Toki again, his breath hitching as Toki kisses him back. “Yous my favorites, toos,” he whispers. “And nots just because you puts a curse ons me— Although, you dids, you dildo.”

Toki knows things can’t stay this good, they never do, for him. But for now, he just wants to enjoy being loved, so completely and totally loved, not by some cruel fantasy or facsimile, but by the real Skwisgaar, in all his specificity— in all his golden greatness, and prickliness, and melancholy, and hidden sweetness, and secret doubts. This is nothing like the vague, shimmery dreams he’s had about being together, that left him feeling frustrated and ashamed. It’s so good, because it’s so real, so rich with satisfying detail. He knows it’s not a dream, because his brain couldn’t have come up with it.

Skwisgaar throws his long arm out behind him, groping for the nightstand, and instead of the vodka, he produces a Gideon Bible. “Reads me a bedtime story,” he sighs, tucking his head under Toki’s chin.

“It amn’t reallies… dat kinda book,” Toki laughs.

“Das okei,” Skwisgaar sighs. His warm breath teases Toki’s throat. “I just wants to knows… abouts you…” he murmurs. 

Toki cracks the Bible open, holding it behind Skwisaar’s head and riffling through the onion skin pages. The title page announces it as the King James Version. “I’s not even dat kinda Christian,” he says. “Dis was left here by some American Evanzgelickals. My parent’s church ams _kalvinistkirke_.”

“S’not deh same book?”

He squints, straining to read by the flickering light of the television. Someone has gone over First Corinthians with a ballpoint pen. “Dere ams like, hundreds of different vorsions of deh Bibles,” he explains. “I guess… dat ams why I don’t really takes it dat seriouslies no more,” he sighs. “When I lefts homes, and realized dat dere ams so many different ways of thinkings, and so many peoples tryings to convince you dat dheir’s ams deh only right one, I pretty much gaves up on tryings to finds deh Truth.” He smiles. There’s a map in the back, of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Like it’s _The Lord of the Rings_. Like the Bible took place on a fictional planet. “I means, accordings to dis book, for examples,” he says, “ _you_ would be goings to Hells likes a hundred times overs. And I don’t believes dat abouts you.”

“No?” Skwisgaar asks. “Dat’s too bads. S’kinda what I was going fors.”

Toki strokes the crown of Skwisgaar’s head with his closed mouth. The words flash in and out of his vision, as the page turns black, then pink, then red, then black. 

  
  
  
  


The next morning, when Toki opens his eyes, he’s initially disheartened to find the bed empty beside him.

“Hey dere, sleepies heads,” he hears. 

He looks up to find Skwisgaar standing over him, wearing the gray football sweatshirt he purchased yesterday and an unknown pair of light blue jeans. “It’s fucking noons,” Skwisgaar smirks. He drops a bundle of clothes on Toki’s face. “Go takes a shower and puts dese ons, you lazy lumps.”

Clenching his belly, Toki hauls himself into a sitting position. “Dids you drives to a clothing store?” he asks. 

Skwisgaar shrugs. “Tooks a shower. Ates breakfast. Gots sick of sittings around waitings for you all days, and decideds to goes out and gets some supplies.”

In the small bathroom, Toki strips under a fluorescent light and climbs under the faintly chlorine-scented water. The stall is cramped, and the pressure is poor. When you’re used to living in luxury for so long, you forget about things like weak water pressure. 

Toki doesn’t mind though. Nothing can sink his buoyant mood. He can’t even remember the last time he slept so well, no nightmares, no tossing and turning. By the time he’s toweling himself off, his face hurts from smiling. 

Skwisgaar bought him a roll of black crew socks, a three-pack of black boxer briefs, a plain white t-shirt, and a pair of blue jeans. He puts them on, rubbing inside his ear with a corner of the towel slung around his neck, his still damp hair swaying behind him as he walks back into the room. 

“I saved you a muffin,” says Skwisgaar, tossing him the cellophane-wrapped remainder of their ‘continental breakfast.’ 

“Thanks.” Toki catches it, sitting back down on the edge of the bed. 

Skwisgaar is cross-legged in the middle of the mattress, pouring over a fold-out map from the kiosk beside the reception desk. 

“Whats you lookings at?” Toki asks, taking a bite of the muffin. It’s banana nut. Not bad. 

Distracted, Skwisgaar scratches behind his ear. “I can’t believes I’s been reduced to puttings dat crap in my hairs,” he says, waving in the direction of the bathroom, with its cheap mini shampoos. “But porhaps it ams best dat my hairs don’t waves properly, and looks likes dildos. Deh betters for no ones to reckogznise me,” he sighs.

“I think yous deh only one who notices dat,” says Toki. “Yous hair looks porfects to me.”

“Tchh, you don’t knows from good hairs, Toki.” Skwisgaar jots something on the map with a black marker. “Dhey gots a lotta hiking trails around heres,” he says. “You likes natures, rights? You wanna goes on a hike?” He looks up, smirking at Toki’s bewildered expression. “I calleds deh managers,” he explains. “Tolds him we’s gonna be gone a few days.”

Toki coughs, swallowing his muffin wrong in his haste to speak. “We’s not goin’ back yet?” he asks, excited. He wants nothing more than for the adventure to continue.

Skwisgaar’s gaze flickers, without looking up from the map. “No, Toki,” he says. “Dis mess yous made ams gonna take more den one days to sorts out.”

Toki leans closer, wet hair dangling in his lap. “Is you still mad at me?” he asks.

“Dat amn’t a fair questions,” says Skwisgaar. He shoots Toki a dark look. “Hows I supposed to knows if I’s mad at you, under dis conditions? Anyway,” he caps the marker. “Beings mad ams a waste of energies. Don’t helps me ackomsplish nothings. Dat’s why I always says to myselfs, ‘ _a_ _mor fati_.’”

“What ams dat?”

“Dat ams whats deh ancients stoicks philoskophers says. It means ‘accepts yous fate, and don’t bes such a bitch about it.’ And it has helps me out a lotta times.”

Toki chews a chunk full of walnuts, considering this. “What ams deh plan now?” he asks, after a while.

“Wells.” Skwisgaar sits up, leaning back on his elbows. “Deh… ezkperiments. Was a success, I thinks.” He shrinks from eye contact again, addressing himself to roughly the area of Toki’s knees. 

“What was you tryinks to determines?”

He twists the marker between his hands, composing his answer. “I’s doings a lot betters today, den yesterdays,” he says quietly. “Beings… wit’ you? All nights? Really, ah. Really seemeds to eases deh, ah, problems I was havings, sos…” 

“Sos?” Toki swallows. 

Skwisgaar folds the map and slips it into his pocket, tucking the marker behind his ear and knitting his hands together in his lap. “I thinks if I just. Immerses myself in doze feelings like dat, every once in a whiles… den I should be ables to functions pretty much like normals deh rest of deh times. Yous knows, like.” He makes a quick, rolling gesture, like he expects Toki to fill him in. “Like deh brain medicines, or somet’ink?” 

Toki makes a face. There’s a splinter of walnut stuck between his teeth. “How does you wants to, ah. Implements dat?” he asks, digging inelegantly with a crooked pinkie in his mouth. 

“Like dis.” Skwisgaar gestures around the room. “Thinks of it likes a vacations from real lifes. Dat way, we keeps dem separates.”

“You means… we does _dis_ agains? We just disappears for a few days and drives arounds?”

“Ja. Like we did back in deh old days. Like dat time I took you to Borning Mans.” He scrunches one eye shut, pointing his finger at Toki. “But not _too much_ likes dat, because dat was a mistakes. No embarrassinks me, and no fistsfights wit’ strangers.”

Toki nods, duly chastened. He balls up the paper muffin liner inside the scrap of cellophane. “Sos…” he says slowly, “deh plan ams dat we’s gonna, periodicallies, goes on road trips where we sleeps together, and ackts like we’s… in a romantick relations’hips? And den we’s gonna go back home and pretends like dat never happends? And it amn’t gonna affects our behaviors, and nobody ams goings to notice?”

Skwisgaar glares at him. “You gots a betters ideas?” 

“Noes.” Toki hugs his knees. “Just clarifyings.” 

He wonders if maybe, now that Skwisgaar has taken an interest in the Bible, he ought to reciprocate by picking up a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s _Meditations_. He remembers being informed at some point, probably by Nathan, that Skwisgaar’s adherance to an ancient school of philosophy didn’t qualify as ‘gay’ or ‘lame’ like being a Christian did, on account of ‘Skwisgaar’s guys fed those guys to fucking lions for entertainment.’ He also remembers learning, again probably from Nathan, that Skwisgaar credits the teachings of stoicism with helping him overcome his addiction to heroin, but also that ‘it was a long time ago, and he doesn’t like to talk about that.’ 

The heroin saga is one part of the legend of Skwisgaar Skwigelf that even his most dogged stalkers in the media have struggled to reconstruct in any real detail, to the point where some have theorized that he made the whole thing up in order to bolster his mystique. Toki has only ever received frustrating glimpses into this period of Skwisgaar’s life, long before Toki knew him. But as someone, probably Pickles, assured him, this chapter was both very real, and very dark.

The closest Skwisgaar himself has ever come to discussing it with Toki was in the oblique form of a disquisition on the merits of the _Meditations_. They’d been at some sort of industry party, the kind Skwisgaar normally hated— or perhaps relished conspicuously hating —and Toki had gone over to bask in the comforting glow of his disdain for people other than Toki. But Skwisgaar had been in a mild and melancholic mood that night, and instead of roasting the guest list, he’d tried to convey the appeal of stoicism to a buzzed and inattentive interlocutor. 

Epictetus, one of the greatest Stoic philosophers, as he’d explained, was a slave, and his life was totally brutal, but by mastering his own mind, he was able to transcend his circumstances. Marcus Aurelius, who followed in his footsteps, was a Roman Emperor; He was the emperor of the known world, and yet he still felt like a slave. 

In retrospect, Toki wonders if this was Skwisgaar’s circuitous way of trying to get him to ask if that was how _Skwisgaar_ felt. 

The more he combs his memories, the more openings like this Toki is beginning to realize he’s missed over the years. And he finds himself hoping— though he knows this hope is dangerous —that this trip of theirs will be an opportunity to make up for lost time.   
  
  
  
  
  
  


Each one of the following several days is a strong contender for the single greatest day of Toki’s life. They drive through the mountains, headed nowhere in particular, stopping to walk around and take in the vistas. One of Toki’s favorite things about America is that you can drive basically forever, and never run out of small towns and anonymous road. They eat at a different cheap restaurant, and stay at a different cheap hotel each night, always paying for two rooms, and sleeping in one. They watch a lot of inane, late night television. They talk about music, and folklore, and the Bible, and women, and getting high, and the wilderness, and animals, and about their lives, but there are also long stretches of silence. 

On the first morning, Toki is awakened by the sound of Skwisgaar’s laughter. He looks up at around nine a.m. to see Skwisgaar curled in an armchair by the window, a paper cup of vending-machine coffee beside him on the table, his phone pressed against his ear, his hair draped over the back of the chair, in line with the gap in the curtain, like a stripe of light. 

His eyes crinkle when he sees that Toki is awake, and he stands up from the chair, holding out his phone and replaying the scratchy sound of his voicemail over the speaker— “ _You baschtardsch schtole my car again! I schwear to Pissch Chrischt!_ ” —until, laughing so hard he can barely breathe, he collapses, knees first, onto the bed. 

“Good mornings,” says Toki. 

Skwisagaar rolls over, the back of his head falling against Toki’s thigh as he catches his breath. “Poor Mordorface,” he gasps. “He ams like Daffy Duck; He just can’ts wins!” He draws the sleeve of his gray sweatshirt over the back of his hand to wipe away tears.

“Does dat make you Bugs Bunny?” Toki asks, smiling down at him in bemusement. 

“Pffft, obviouslies; I ams effortlessly cools and totally unflapplables.”

“And occasionally dresses likesa lady.”

Skwisgaar lifts his head, bracing his hands on either side of Toki’s hips. “It’s calleds _fashions_ ,” he says, swaying closer, his hair teasing Toki’s bare chest. “And ifs you hadsa beautifuls mout’ like mine,” he purrs, “you’d put lipsticks on it, toos.” He kisses Toki softly, then with a kind of anxious passion. It’s visibly difficult for him to control himself whenever they touch, and he seems sort of caught between resenting the pull of the magic on his body and deciding to give in and fully enjoy it. Toki is riveted, feeling his token resistance, his inevitable surrender, his groaning acceptance of Toki’s tongue. “Come on, Tweetzy Bord,” says Skwisgaar, coming up for air. “Does somet’ink wit’ yous hands.”

It’s almost ten as they collapse, sighing in satisfaction and threading their limbs around each other. Having sex with someone who’s magically compelled to find you attractive is verging on bowling with bumpers, but leave it to Toki to still find a way to suffer from performance anxiety. It doesn’t take much at all for him to make Skwisgaar squirm, little hisses escaping him as he struggles to mute himself. Still, Toki is anxious to do a good job. He is all too aware of the sheer scale and scope of his competition. 

“Mmmn…” Skwisgaar lies limp in his arms, his smooth chest glowing pink under Toki’s rough fingers, as Toki bows to lap a jewel of sweat from the hollow of his throat. “Oukay,” Skwisgaar says, “I haves notes.”

“You whats?” Toki pants. “Fucks you, you haves notes! You gonna tells me some old ladies haves made you comes harder den dat? I don’t think sos.” 

Skwisgaar laughs. He rolls off of Toki’s chest, propping himself sideways on his elbow. “What can I says? I’s nothink ifs not a porfecktionist.”

“Okei,” Toki scoffs, “whats you wants from me deh next times?” 

“Just a littles more ent’usiasms,” Skwisgaar shrugs, picking a loose needle of down from the comforter. “Don’t just… frowns at me, like yous tryings to solves deh word jumble on a box of cereals.” He chews his lip, hair shading his eyes. It really is different, without all that product in it. It doesn’t wave symmetrically, but curls at random, mainly in the bottom third. “What really, eh, torns me ons, I guess, ams seeings deh other porsons ams torns ons. Sos, you don’t hasta overthinks it, just… You coulds maybe, pulls on my hairs a littles. Not too hards, but. Like yous really inzto it,” he says, almost shyly. “Or evens, you coulds maybe says somet’ink…”

“Whats, like, ‘wowie Skwisgaar, yous gots a real big cock?’” Toki laughs.

“For eggzample.” Skwisgaar rolls his eyes. “But maybe tries to be a littles bit more creatives. Like, I don’t knows, tells me somet’ink I hasn’t heard a millions-krillions times.”

Toki pulls the blankets over his legs, shivering as the sweat cools on his skin. “Ams dat what deh groupies ams like wid’ you?” he asks. “Does dhey ackts all impressed? Like, ‘oh I can’t believes I gets to does it wid’ deh reals Skwisgaar Skwigelf, oh wowie, dis ams my dreams.’” 

“Ja. Whats?” Skwisgaar blushes. “I _likes_ dat stuff.” 

“Dat’s so… nice.” Toki smiles. He’s heard enough men boasting about how much they like to choke women, and spit on them, to no longer find such things particularly exotic; But there is something deeply endearing about the thought that Skwisgaar gets off to groupies simply telling him how great he is.

The next day, they discover an alpine lake on the map and decide to go swimming. They drive through a valley surrounded by wetlands, vast pools of water so smooth and reflective that from a distance, they look like sheets of metal, marred by clods of black earth, like a tarnish on old silver. Toki gazes out the window, sucking on a sugerfree Jolly Rancher. He’s all out of red and pink ones, and soon he’ll be down to the purple and orange.

“I has a confections to makes,” says Skwisgaar. It’s the first thing he’s said since they started driving.

Toki looks away from the window. “Ja?” 

“I don’t one-hundred-perskents hates dis.” 

The sound of the air roaring all around them could almost be the sound on the inside of a sea shell, except that it’s occasionally interrupted by the doppler effect of another vehicle passing them on the road. Most of them are long-haul trucks, whose proximity makes Toki nervous. 

Skwisgaar waits for the sound of a truck to fade into the distance before elaborating. “I feels like I’s goings crazy,” he says. An irrepressible smile yanks at his mouth. “I feels like if I lets go of dis steerings wheel, I might floats away. I feels like my body ams made outta rainbows.” He gives a sputter of laughter. “Toki, what deh fucks I’m gonna do?” 

Toki sticks his hand out the window, opening and closing his fingers to feel the slipstreams of air between them, and considers whether or not this is a rhetorical question. “Likes you said,” he offers, “t’ings don’t hasta change dat much. No one has to knows.”

“No, Toki,” Skwisgaar sighs. His forehead wrinkles, like he’s in pain. “Dis ams goings to change me. Not all at once, maybe. But, evenchkualies.” 

They park the Camaro as discreetly as its caution-yellow paint job will allow, and leave their clothes on a dry, flat rock near the edge of the lake. The water is freezing cold, and so clear they can look down and see their feet on the bottom.

Toki dives under the water immediately, laughing when he resurfaces to find Skwisgaar hissing at the temperature as he inches his way in. The sun is high and white, like a simmering antacid tablet in a sky the color of mouthwash, and the lake is like a giant mouth, the shadows of the mountains on either side forming two rows of jagged teeth. 

“My torns,” says Toki, treading water to keep his blood up. As long as you’re moving, the cold isn’t so bad. The pure water stings, in a good way, against the scabbing wound on his fret hand. “What ams something no one knows dat yous self-conschkious abouts?” he asks.

Skwisgaar pauses. “Honestlies?”

“You haves to be honest, dat ams deh whole point of deh games.”

He’s in up to his ribs now, still holding his arms above the surface. The ends of his hair are already floating. “My heights.”

Toki scoffs. “What? No ways.”

“Ja, you knows.” Skwisgaar reaches back, gathering his partially-dipped hair into a ponytail, though there is nothing to secure it with. “I ams acktuallies closers to six-sevens; But I rounds downs to six-sixes, because I don’t really likes it.”

“Dat’s stupids,” says Toki. “Don’t all guys wishes dhey was talls?”

“But dere ams such a thing as _too_ talls.” Skwisgaar tilts his neck back, perhaps stiff from driving, and releases the rope of his hair to dangle in the water again. “I mean, I’s used to it now. But it was real awkward at forst.” 

“How come?” It’s hard for Toki to imagine a time when Skwisgaar was anything other than heartbreakingly graceful and utterly at home in his gazelle-like body. 

Skwisgaar smiles. “I was pretty shy, as kid, you knows?” he says. “I didn’t wants deh attentions. Don’t looks at me likes dat, it ams trues!” He looks towards the mountains. “My moms was a fashion model— amongs other t’ings —and she ams like, six-two I thinks? In Americans units? Which ams, obviouslies, eznormous forsa woman.” He laughs. “Sos, it amn’t like I couldn’t haves seens it comings. But stills, it happened so fast. One day, I was just a littles kids, and den, all deh suddens:” He gestures down at himself. “I’s _dis_.” He shrugs. “I didn’t knows whats to does wit’ myself, at forst. I didn’t wants to stands out. But it ams unpossibles not to when yous always deh tallest porson in deh rooms. And it ams evens warse outside of Swedens, where deh average height ams so much lowers.”

He crosses his arms over his chest like a pharaoh and falls backward into the water, finally submerging his head. 

“Oukay, my torns,” he says, upon resurfacing. “Has you evers done it wit’ anothers man?”

“Has _you?_ ” Toki reddens. 

“You gotsta answers forst, it ams my torns!”

Toki looks down into the water, wriggling his toes. The smooth, blue-gray stones feel nice under his feet. “Ja, I has,” he says, after a while. 

Skwisgaar looks surprised. Jealous? “Whos?”

“One question per torns!”

Skwisgaar shakes his head, tossing off little droplets. “Dat’s called a follows-up,” he says. “It ams a compound-questions.”

“Just… fans,” says Toki. “More den one. But not dat many. It ams only happeneds a few times. I keeps it secret from you guys, for obvious reasons.” He pinches a stone between his toes and lifts his foot to grab it. “I guess, I’s always known dat— Dat I likes men. But…”

“But whats?”

He turns the stone between his hands and releases it, watching it fall and settle on the bottom. “It ams… still hard for me to talks about it out louds,” he admits. He closes his eyes. “I knows it amn’t metals; Gettings married before God, and settlings down wiffs somebody yous gonna spends deh resta yous lifes wid’. But deh truth ams dat I still really wants a lotta dat stuff I was brought up to wants. Just not… wiffs a lady.” When he opens his eyes again, he half expects to look down and see his father’s face below him in the freezing water. “I feels stupid.” He laughs angrily at himself. “I don’t knows why it ams so hards. I shoulds just says it.” 

“Den says it,” Skwisgaar urges.

Toki bends his knees, sinking up to his chin, and letting his hair float around him in a cloud. Skwisgaar sinks, mirroring him, so that they’re eye to eye across the silver surface. 

Toki can hear his heartbeat in his ears. “I thinks I’m gay,” he says, at last. “I’s never admitteds dat out louds to anyone. Not evens deh guys I’s done it wid’. Yous deh forst porson I’s ever tolds.”

Skwisgaar smiles. “Wells, at least I has deh honor ofs beings deh forst in somes respeckt.” He stands, glassy water bisecting him at the waist, loops of damp hair clinging to his chest like filigree. He’s the most magnificent-looking person Toki’s ever seen, and Toki wishes letting go of the shame of wanting him was as simple as admitting it. 

“Okei, my torns:” Toki stands up with a splash. He rubs his moustache, debating whether or not he really wants to know the answer to this next one. But it just has to be asked. “What does you really thinks of me as a guitarist?” he blurts. “If I’s really so dildos, why does you ezpeckts so much from mes? And ifs you really wants me to be greats, why does you freaks out whenevers I tries to improves myself?” He crosses his arms, defensive. “Dat ams a compound-questions.” 

“Hmmnn…” Skwisgaar lies back, floating, his face to the sun. “Yous natch’rallies talented, but inzconsistents and lazies,” he hums. “You wants deh attenions and praises dat goes wit’ beings deh best, but yous not willings to puts in deh efforts and makes deh sacrifices to gets dere. And as someones who haves dedicateds my entire lifes to dis inztruments, dat kinda pisses me offs.” His eyes are closed, pyrite lashes spiked with moisture. 

Toki paddles towards him. “Dere ams gotsta be more to it den dat,” he says. “Or else you wouldn’t waste yous time on me.”

Skwisgaar lifts his head, blinking slowly. Unsurprised to find Toki so close. His pupils are dilated and shimmering with motion. 

“I nevers understoods it befores,” says Toki quietly. “But I thinks I ams startings to sees it: Yous forstrated. You wants somet’ing from me.” 

“It ams complexcated,” says Skwisgaar. “Hard to ezkplains.” 

“But whys?” asks Toki. “Whys it gotta be likes dat? I know I makes mistakes. But why does fizguring out what you wants from me gotta feel like beings lost in a maze?”

They drift, almost, but not kissing. Skwisgaar has never been great at maintaining eye contact, love spell aside. Now though, he stares Toki down, inhaling through his nose as emotion is forcibly wrung from him. “As you knows, I’s been in a lotta bands,” he begins. “Playeds wit’ all kinda guitarists, even some dat was akchually really goods. But I’s never played wit’ anyone likes you.” He flinches, bested by the magic again. Or maybe he was triggering it on purpose, to help him answer Toki’s question. “No one evers pushes me likes you,” he says. “I really meants dat. No one else’s sound has evers… gots into my heads likes yours.”

Toki holds his breath and arches his feet under the water, wanting to hear more, wanting to understand. Skwisgaar floats backward, going deeper, until their feet can’t reach the bottom, and Toki follows him, unthinking, as though drawn along on an invisible string. 

“I’s never been so compatibles wit’ someone, musically speakings,” Skwisgaar says. “When yous really givings me what I needs from you… It ams almost like I gotsa seconds pair of hands to works wit’. I gets addicteds to beings able to writes like dat, and plays like dat. Like I’m two different peoples.” He floats closer, their faces almost touching, his hair licking against Toki’s shoulders, and then kicks away. “But yous unreliables,” he says. “I can’t lets myself becomes dependents on you.”

“Don’t says dat,” Toki groans. “I’s not deh only one beings unconsistents. Yous not just mad when I don’t prackstice, yous mad when I _does_ prackstice. Whys?” 

“I’s afraids… dat wills haves to be a separates questions.” Skwisgaar has backed them into the shadow of the mountain. The light is different here, and the water is even colder. His lips are already purpling when he speaks again. “Let’s heads back in.” 

That night, they eat at one of those strip mall sushi counters where the food parades by you on a little conveyor belt, and Toki’s inner-monologue supplies him with a constant stream of plausible rationalizations. 

It’s not _so_ bad, what he’s done, Toki thinks, as he slurps some sort of eel-thing, washing it down with a swig of hot broth. In fact, he’d go so far as to say that Skwisgaar seems happier this way. He’s talkative, his appetite is better. His whole face looks softer, without that surgically precise middle part in his hair, and Toki keeps catching him smiling. And he’s still himself, Toki reasons. At least, in all the ways that really matter. Less irritable, maybe. A bit more uninhibited. But still, unmistakably, Skwisgaar. 

Afterwards, they lean against the parked car, passing a cigarette between them, and Skwisgaar asks Toki the one question he doesn’t want to answer:

“My torns,” he says, squinting up at the stars. Toki takes the cigarette, and Skwisgaar turns to face him, barricading him against the driver’s side door. “Would you frees me from dis spell now, ifs you coulds?” His expression is grave, almost pleading.

“Of course I woulds,” Toki lies. “I loves you; I never wanteds to… forces you, or does anyt’ing to horts you.” The cigarette dangles, unsmoked in his hand, and Skwisgaar plucks it from him, flicking it onto the ground.

“Is you sures?” Skwisgaar asks. “Be sures.”

“I just wanteds to gets your attentions.” Toki looks away in real enough shame. “I didn’t knows it would be forevers. I didn’t knows it would horts you. I’m so sorries. Of course, I would takes it backs, ifs I coulds.”

Skwisgaar sinks with relief. “Okei,” he says. “I believes you.” He drapes his arms over Toki’s shoulders, his breath warming Toki’s face. “I trusts you,” he says, screwing his courage. “I can does dis. I can does dis wit’ you.” He kisses Toki, succumbing to that powerful cocktail of adoration, and desire, and destiny, and whatever else Toki has paid for him to be forced to feel. “Dis ams not exactlies how I thoughts my life was gonna go,” he chuckles breathlessly. “But…” He noses Toki’s cheek. “It amn’ts deh end of deh worlds. I can does dis.” The influence of the spell is palpable as he quivers in its invisible grip.

Toki kisses back, swallowing down the vinegar in his stomach. He’s a liar. He’s enjoying this. He wants Skwisgaar to be stuck this way forever. He’d do it again. 

“You was rights,” Skwisgaar says, “dat I has been inzconsistents.” He nestles Toki’s lake-damp hair. “I’s never sure what I wants from you. Dere ams a cortain… pushes and pulls.”

“Whats you means?” Toki asks.

“Sometimes,” says Skwisgaar, “I wishes I could goes back to deh way I was before we mets: Totallies unrivaleds. Totallies _sui generis_. Ables to packs up and leaves for deh next band whenever I feels like it. But deh truth ams, dat yous takens me to a levels I woulds haves nevers reaches on my owns.” He kisses Toki’s forehead. His eyes are distant. “Yous like… my muse, or somet’ink,” he says. “And maybe I shits on you more den ams strictly necessaries, because I’s terrifieds dat I needs you, and I don’t wants you to realizes how talenteds you really are, and den decides you don’t needs me.”

Toki hurls himself at Skwisgaar’s torso, causing both of them to stagger away from the car. Nothing could have prepared him for these words. He feels impaled on them; A long, hollow needle inserted directly into his brain. “Of course I needs you,” he sobs. “You gave me everyt’ing I has. I woulds be nothing withouts you.” He claws at the gray sweatshirt. He is cannibalistic with longing; He wants to pry Skwisgaar’s rib cage open and sip directly from the heart of his genius. “I wants to be what you sees in me,” he says. “I wants to be yous others hands. I wants to be greats.”

“You coulds be,” Skwisgaar promises. “You coulds helps me realizes my visions of takings deh guitars to a level no one haves takens it befores.” He seizes Toki by the chin, holding his gaze. His eyes are a hot mineral blue, his lip curling with intensity. “But you would haves to dedicates yous lifes to it, Toki. Yous never mets a Christian believes in deh Bibles more den I believes in deh guitars. You understands what I’s sayings?”

Toki nods furiously against his palm. 

Skwisgaar’s expression softens. “Dat would be deh greatest gift you could possiblies gives me, älskling,” he whispers. His body curls around Toki like the husk of petals around a bud. It’s everything Toki could ever have wanted— the man of his dreams, hopelessly in love with him, the path set before him of sublime artistic achievement.

There’s no way Toki’s not going to Hell for this. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
It rains the whole next day, and they spend most of it in a hotel room, cuddling, and channel surfing, and eating Chinese takeout. Toki sits up, leaning back against the headboard on a stack of pillows and messing with the remote as Skwisgaar lies on his chest, endlessly caressing him, as if determined to soak up as much of Toki as possible while he still can. They promised Offdensen they’d be back tomorrow to catch up on the album.

Settling on a cooking show, Toki tosses the remote aside and folds his arms around Skwisgaar’s clinging form. “I wish we didn’t haves to goes homes,” he sighs. 

Skwisgaar’s breath is relaxed and even. Lying in bed and listening to the pattering of the rain all day, he has taken on an almost trancelike quality. “Wells,” he says. “We does.” His eyelashes tickle Toki’s skin. “We’s in Dethklok. Dere ams works to be done.”

Will everything return to normal once they’re back at Mordhaus? Will the perfect, tiny world of these past few days rupture like a soap bubble upon contact with their real lives? At least there’s the next time to look forward to. Skwisgaar did say there’d be a next time; Though Toki is itching to prod him about when. 

“I’m gonna miss holdings you,” he says.

Skwisgaar gives him a squeeze. He’s become more and more compulsively affectionate, Toki thinks. Will he even be able to turn it off when they get home? “And I misses my guitar,” he says. “But when we lefts, I didn’ts know dis was gonna torns inzto a whole big productions, so I didn’ts thinks to brings it.”

“We’ll haves to pack betters deh next times,” says Toki. He stares ahead, picking at his bandage. They’re making something on television that involves an elaborate cage of asparagus. “Which will bes… when exactlies?” he finally asks.

“Yous so impatients.” Skwisgaar yawns. “You has to gives me time. I’s workings on, eh. What you might calls a longer-terms solutions.”

“Whats you means?”

He shifts, wrapping his leg around Toki’s lower half under the covers. “We can’t derails everyt’ing right now,” he continues. “You knows, wit’ deh bands and everyt’ing. But someday, when t’ings ams in a differents place…” 

Toki’s heart skips. “A differents place? Whats yous sayings?”

“Wells,” says Skwisgaar. “To begins wit’, I’s getting olds.”

“Yous not olds!”

He snorts. “Toki, I’s gonna be t’irty-six. Dat ams getting olds in dis line of work.”

“Well, you don’t looks olds,” says Toki, dumbly. “Yous so beautifuls.”

Skwisgaar twists his neck to look up at him, like ‘no shit, you dildo.’ It suddenly occurs to Toki that it’s impossible for him to imagine Skwisgaar as an old man, and almost equally impossible to imagine him as a child. Serveta notwithstanding, did he not simply spring, fully-formed, like Aphrodite from the surf, a mahogany and rosewood Gibson Explorer gleaming in his hands?

“My point ams, dis lifestyle amn’t sustainables,” he says. “Everyone knows dat. You dies young and cools, or you lives to be olds and lames. And it amn’ts as ifs I has any plans for deh rest of my lifes, afterswards.”

Toki frowns. “Afterswards? Afters what, afterswards?” 

“Afters beings deh greatest guitarist in deh worlds,” says Skwisgaar, with an imperious flick of his hand. He stretches lazily against Toki, his joints faintly popping. “I’s achieveds my dreams, ja? Sos… den whats?” 

Of course, Toki’s always been cognizant, in an abstract sort of way, that Dethklok couldn’t last forever; But he doesn’t like to think about it. “Wells…” he croaks. “Whats?” 

“I always figureds, you knows,” Skwisgaar drawls, nosing the underside of Toki’s jaw. “I woulds either takes up my old smacks habit agains… or just kills myself and gets it overs wit’.”

“Don’t says dat,” Toki whispers, horrified. But when he looks down, Skwisgaar is smiling. 

“Anyways,” Skwisgaar laughs, “nows, insteads, I ams t’inkings: Afters rock n’ roll haves finally cheweds me up and spits me out, you can has whatever ams left of me. Whats you t’inks about dat?” 

Toki clutches him fiercely. “You means like… be togethers for reals?”

“Ja,” Skwisgaar shrugs. “Someday. We could gets a little house on deh coast in Spains, and eats a lotta fresh fishes, and watches dem guys wit’ deh red capes gets goreds to death by deh bull.”

“Why Spains?” Toki asks, though the location hardly matters. The fantasy of settling down anywhere together is instantly captivating.

Skwisgaar kisses the thumb of his bandaged hand. “It ams deh birthplace of deh very forst grandpa’s guitar,” he says dreamily. 

Toki laughs, more out of sheer joy than humor. “Woulds you plays deh grandpa’s guitar for me?” he asks. 

Skwisgaar makes a noncommittal noise. 

And just like that, it’s suddenly possible to imagine a future after Dethklok. Toki closes his eyes, holding his love, and listening to the rattling of the wind and rain outside. His heart feels like a warm kitten curled up sleeping in the center of his chest. 

“Anyways,” Skwisgaar yawns. “We’ll see what happens. We’s in unscharted territories, here. From dis point onwards, it ams dragons.” 

“Whats you means?” Toki asks. 

“Likes, in medievals times,” says Skwisgaar, “in deh edges of deh maps dhey woulds writes, ‘here ams dragons.’” 

“Ja buts, what’s it _means?_ ”

“Dhey was afraid to ventures into deh unknown lands, because many places was full of dragons in dhose days. Dhey was probably warnings deh travelers, sos dhey wouldn’t gets eaten. But, deh dragons dies out, unfortunatelies, sos. Today, it ams just a metaphors.” 

Toki covers his mouth, stifling a snicker. “Skwisgaar, I don’t think dragons ams ever been reals.” 

Skwisgaar pushes himself up off Toki’s chest, affronted. “Oh, sos you can believes in witches, but I’s not alloweds to believes in dragons?” 

“It ain’ts deh sames!”

“Now all deh sudden yousa crypto-zoologists?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


For the first time since their vacation from real life began, Toki is the first one awake. He opens his eyes at around seven a.m., and he’s too full of nerves to bother closing them again. Today is the day they promised they’d be heading back to Mordhaus.

He gets up and sits by the window, grabbing a pair of chopsticks and picking at one of several containers of by-now coagulated, room temperature rice. It’s soothing, watching the rise and fall of Skwisgaar’s sleeping form under the covers, as sure and regular as a metronome, as vital to Toki as his own heart. But his reverie is interrupted by an insistent tapping at the window.

He lifts the curtain, only slightly, so as not to disturb Skwisgaar’s sleep. Outside, standing on the air conditioning until, is a huge, black bird. A raven. A raven with an envelope in its beak. It taps the glass with its claw, demanding Toki’s attention. 

Toki glances over his shoulder before unlatching the window and sliding it open; Not far, just far enough to accommodate the raven. It hops up onto the concrete sill before the window, presenting him with the cream colored envelope. 

“Takk,” says Toki, bewildered, as the raven performs a ceremonious little bow. He offers it the takeout box of rice, into which it gratefully plunges its beak, and looks down at the envelope. It’s a letter, addressed to him, on nice, old fashioned paper. 

‘Toki—’ the letter reads. 

‘I felt bad about not being able to help you. So I did some research, and it looks like I may have a solution for you and your friend, after all. Even though the circle is closed, there might be a work-around. 

Call me. 

—Belinda’

And then a phone number. 

Heart pounding, Toki stuffs the letter back into the envelope and shoves it into his pocket. He is going to Hell for this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey dildo, your classics major is showing.


	3. Chapter 3

They check out of the hotel at ten, so they can refuel and be back on the 89 by eleven. Today is cool and bright out, and the air is silvery with the smell of rain. 

One downside to vintage cars is the lack of cupholders, which forces Skwisgaar to pinch his sloshing gas station coffee between his thighs as he attempts to drink and drive, with mixed success. The sleeves of his gray sweatshirt are rolled up to the elbows, fine amber hairs on the backs of his forearms catching the high late-morning sun. He seems distracted. Toki wonders if he’s nervous about going home again. It’s not going to be easy to just pick up where they left off, as if they don’t know what each other’s skin tastes like. 

Back on the highway, Skwisgaar rests a light hand on the steering wheel and raises the styrofoam cup to his mouth with the other. Maybe it’s just the anxiety talking, but the way he keeps taking his eyes off the road as he tilts his head back to swallow is giving Toki flashbacks to ‘Crash Site on the Corner of Blood Street and Guts Circle.’

“Whats you thinkings about?” Skwisgaar asks him. His eyes are smiling in the rear view mirror. “Yous so quiets dis morning.” 

Toki flinches. “I’s quiets?”

“Ja,” Skwisgaar says. “Yous normallies super annoying.” His teasing is thick as frosting with affection. It seems like it’s getting harder and harder for him to suppress it. 

Toki’s cheeks tingle. He wishes Skwisgaar would consider leaving his hair this way— all natural, and air-dried, and tossed over one shoulder —but he knows it’s probably out of the question. 

“I’s just hungries,” he says. He stares straight ahead through the windshield, watching the broken white lane line disappear beneath the wheels. The sparkle in Skwisgaar’s eyes is killing him. He swears he’s never seen them sparkle like that.

Belinda’s letter is burning a hole in his pocket.

  
  
  
  
  
  


They pull off at a little country breakfast joint on the grounds of a spreading pick-your-own orchard, and order two platefuls of pork sausages and eggs. Instead of his usual room temperature tap water, Skwisgaar orders them both the fresh squeezed apple juice, which comes in those green-tinted plastic tumblers, like fountain-poured cola. 

Toki has never known Skwisgaar to eat as much as he has over the course of this brief trip. A symptom of being in love? Or maybe his lack of appetite was a symptom of something else in the first place. 

Emotional attachment and physical attraction seem pretty self-explanatory, but what about that third thing?: ‘Psychological wellbeing.’ Is Skwisgaar experiencing improved mental health, now that he’s in love? Is that why he’s eating and sleeping better? He certainly seems more easy-going and less anxious. Maybe he’ll be less of a primadonna now. Maybe it’ll be good for the band. 

Maybe, if Toki tells him about the other option Belinda is offering, he can be persuaded not to take it, because he’ll be so much happier and healthier if he just stays the way he is.

“You ready to gets back to work?” he asks. And god, the way he’s looking at Toki— That _smile_. His whole face is glowing. There’s no way people aren’t going to notice.

“Ja.” Toki clears his throat. 

“I hope sos.” Skwisgaar tears off a piece of fluffy whitebread toast to sop up the residual yolk from his plate. “From now on, I’s gonna be ezpecktings you to be givings me yous best,” he says. “It ams deh least you can do, for puttings me t’rough all dis bullshits,” he adds, but his tone remains fond. 

Toki nods vigorously. “I knows. Yous right.” Of course, he’s resolved to buckle down and get serious about practicing in the past, but this time it’s different. Skwisgaar’s approval has never loomed so tantalizingly close. Toki will practice until his fingers bleed, if it will keep things like this between them. He’ll do anything. For the first time in a while, he’s reminded of something Mr. Seltfcark told him: ‘You’ve either got that fire in your belly, or you don’t.’ Well, he’s burning from the inside out this time. He’s never wanted anything so much. 

“You knows,” says Skwisgaar, pausing to chew and swallow his eggy toast. “If you’re really readies to gets serious, I would actuallies be, eh, happies to involves you in a bit of a sides project I’s got goings on.” His demeanor shifts, turning cautious and quiet, like the shadow of a cloud passing over the sun.

“Reallies?” Toki squeaks. On the one hand, this sounds like a recipe for conflict; Skwisgaar is an inveterate control freak, and there’s no way letting Toki’s clumsy fingers muck up something important to him won’t end with someone getting their teeth knocked out. On the other hand, the thought of being _in on_ something with Skwisgaar, something personal and secret, something beyond the scope of Dethklok, is a temptation Toki is powerless to refuse. “I didn’t even knows you hads a sides project,” he says, trying to play it cool.

“Actuallies,” Skwisgaar lowers his eyelashes shyly and dabs his mouth with a napkin, though there’s no visible food on his face, “I’s been composing a symphony.” 

“Ha! Likes dhose powdered wig guys?” 

“Ja, ezacktlies! Likes dat, but wit’ metals!” He balls the napkin and starts talking fast, gripped by an uncharacteristic earnestness. “Sos, one day, I finally decideds to bites deh bullets and teaches myself how to reads sheets music,” he says. “And nows, I can’t believes I was so resistant to lornings it in deh forst place! I guess I always thought it was redundants because, you knows, I has porfect pitch, and I can plays everyt’ing by ear. But no!” He makes a sweeping rainbow gesture. “It’s opened up, like, a whole new univorse fors me, in terms of musics t’eory. Now, yous probably thinking, like I was, ‘what a bunch of stupids dildos goinks to schools for dat stuffs.’ But it amn’ts likes dat; Knowings t’eory really makes a difference, _ekspeciallies_ when it comes to compositions…” 

Toki drains the last of his apple juice, enraptured. He could listen to Skwisgaar gush about the polyphonic texture of baroque orchestral music forever. The way he looks right now, in a gray sweatshirt and light blue jeans, soft waves piled to one side, revealing a pale crescent of ear— Not _the_ Skwisgaar Skwigelf, epochal international sex symbol and rock n’ roll legend— Just this intense, nerdy guy with this incredible gift, this passion that rules his life, aching for someone to share it with. If Toki could just be that someone, if he could ever _deserve_ to be that someone— And barring that, if he could just memorize this image, just capture this version of Skwisgaar in a snow globe— But it feels like the loveliest moment of his entire life is slipping right through his fat, clumsy, stupid fingers, and there’s nothing he can do to hold onto it. 

“Sos, you layers dozens of different electric guitars and bass tracks over each others,” Skwisgaar is saying, breathless with enthusiasm. “And originallies, I was just gonna plays dem all myself. But if you, I means, if you wanteds to— I wouldn’t gives you deh most complexcated ones, if yous not up to dat— But if you wanteds to, you could provides deh _basso continuo_? I’s been wantings to works in some keyboard tracks, actuallies—”

“I wants to,” Toki blurts. “Of course I wants to.” 

Skwisgaar’s delighted flush renders his eyes, if possible, even bluer. “I won’ts go easy on you,” he says, pointing. “If you wants any of yous tracks to makes deh cuts, dhey has to be fuckings porfect! Don’t gives me dis ‘poor me, Skwisgaar ams a big fat meanie who won’t lets me takes all deh glory withsout doings nonna deh works’ routines.”

Toki folds his hands in prayer. “I won’t. I promiske.” 

Surging to his feet as though physically unable to contain his excitement, Skwisgaar tosses a clump of bills on the table and hoists Toki out of his chair by the arm. “Let’s go,” he says, dragging them towards the door, his large hands easily enveloping the not-insubstantial circumference of Toki’s bicep. “We gotta get back on deh road!”

“Okei,” Toki laughs, the contact buzzing along his nerves. He doesn’t know where this sudden sense of urgency is coming from, but he is loath to question it. Skwisgaar’s enthusiasm is infectious. 

Outside, families with children are lined up to pay by the pound for their wooden crates full of apples as an old man in overalls, seated at a card table, measures each haul. It’s exactly the kind of regular jackoff American fun Toki most envies. In the summer, these people probably let their kids ride water slides and eat popsicles. (Of course, Toki can do those things whenever he wants to now, but it’s not really the same.) 

Skwisgaar leads him behind a little outbuilding, surrounded by stacks of empty wooden crates, and slams him against the aluminum siding, capturing his mouth in a burning, cider-sweet kiss. Soft mewling noises climb their way up Skwisgaar’s throat to vibrate against Toki’s lips, and Toki grasps him, desperately kissing back. It’s not enough. This beautiful dream is almost over, and it’s not enough. Rotting apples litter the straw-packed ground, squishing into sauce beneath their boots, the sweet, swooning fermentation rising up through the air. How can he possibly be asked to go back to the lonely, frustrated pining of his real life after days of this?

Skwisgaar dips his nose under Toki’s collar, inhaling his skin. His legs are wobbling under him. “No more of dis, forsa while,” he breathes, and it’s not clear whether he’s talking to Toki, or to himself. “We has to go backs to work. We has to go backs to normals.” His weight pins Toki to the wall. Despite his words, he can’t seem to tear himself away.

“I knows,” Toki says. “I knows, yous right.” It’s all unraveling so fast. Like yanking on a spool of dental floss, only to realize you’ve reached the end, and hearing the empty plastic bobbin spinning around inside. You knew this was going to happen, Toki tells himself. So why are you so surprised?

“Fffffucks,” Skwisgaar says into Toki’s collar, burrowing like a rabbit. He is capable of making his deep voice sound remarkably small. “I’m so scareds.” 

“Don’t be scareds,” says Toki, caressing his back. “It’s gonna be okei.” Tears sting his sinuses as he reaches into his pocket to fondle the letter. Of course, they’re not really going to record a symphony together. Of course, they’re not really going to buy a little house and settle down together like ordinary, okay people. Like all these stupid regular jackoff famillies. He never should have allowed himself to entertain such fantasies in the first place. Maybe if he hadn’t gotten so caught up in them, this wouldn’t be so hard.

“I-I don’t know how to deals wit’ dis,” Skwisgaar moans. Reluctantly, he pushes away from the wall and cups his hands together, covering his mouth. “I don’t know how to deals withs someone havings so much power overs me,” he whispers. That easy, glowing look is gone, and he seems vulnerable and lost. “But I has to reconciles myself to it.”

It doesn’t have to end, a dark voice whispers in Toki’s ear. You could keep him like this. You don’t have to give him a choice. If you kept him like this, he’d be trapped, and he’d never be able to leave you. And he’d never have to know what a broken, desperate, selfish liar you really are. 

But Toki would know. Even sipping champagne and oysters on the beach in Spain, being serenaded on a grandpa’s guitar by the man of his dreams, he’d still know what he’d done. From the moment he read the letter, he knew— of course, his first impulse was to conceal it, but on some level, even as he rationalized and plotted, he already knew —that the dream would have to end this way. Because he can’t do it; He can’t look that kind of world-conquering genius and passion in the eye and justify keeping it in a cage.

“Somet’ing came to me dis morning, whiles you was still asleeps,” he says. And before he has a chance to change his mind, his hand is already extending the letter. 

Skwisgaar frowns, taking it by the corner and shaking it open. His mouth furrows as his eyes scan the page. The message is only a few sentences long, but it seems to take him a long time to read it. “When was you plannings to tells me about dis?” he finally asks, without looking up. 

Toki’s throat is clogged with misery. Children are squealing somewhere behind them. “I don’t knows,” he admits.

Skwisgaar is calm and even. “Dids you calls dis numbers?” he asks. “Dids you talks to deh witch?”

Toki nods.

“Ands?”

He sits down on one of the empty apple crates, under a tree labeled ‘Honeycrisp.’ His legs don’t feel like carrying him anymore. Shame, and grief, and aimless rage shake him from within as he contemplates Belinda’s offer. If the situation had a face, and Toki saw that face in a bar, he’d beat it within an inch of its life. But he has no one to blame but himself (and Belinda, who he’s too afraid of to try punching) for creating this horrible dilemma. “Like she tolds us before: She can’t undoes deh spell once deh circle ams closed.” He droops. “But she decideds to looks for another solutions. She tolds me she could maybe casts another spell on you dat would cancels deh forst one outs.” 

Skwisgaar folds the letter in half once, then twice, methodically pinching sharp origami creases, and then slips the perfect square into his back pocket. “Cancels it out hows?” he asks.

Toki’s chin hits his collarbone. “She saids she coulds casts a spell on you dat woulds _blocks_ you from lovings me.” He closes his eyes. He’s not going to cry, he decides. 

When he opens them, Skwisgaar’s boots appear in his line of sight, crunching over the dewy broadgrass and fallen apples. He’s close enough for Toki to grab his legs like a little kid and anchor him in place, begging him not to go. But Toki isn’t going to do that, either. 

“It wouldn’t makes you hates me or anyt’ing,” he continues, ashamed of the whiny note in his own voice. “We could still be in a band togethers, and pals around, and all dat. But you wouldn’t be ables to loves me. You wouldn’t be ables to loves me ever agains.” All morning he’s been marshalling his arguments, fired by the hope that maybe he’d be able to convince Skwisgaar to refuse this offer, but he can’t bring himself to voice any of them now. “I knows it’s deh rights thing to do,” he says, defeated. “Obviouslies, we hasta goes wiffs deh solutions dat gives you more freedoms. And you’ll haves a lot more freedoms if you can be wiffs anyone else in the whole worlds, den ifs yous forced to plans deh rest of yous life arounds me.”

Grief cores him. Only now that he’s said it out loud does he realize the truth: The most special person he’s ever known, the love of his life, can only be free by cutting him out like a cancer. 

Skwisgaar works his jaw. “Gets in deh car,” he says softly. 

Toki nods, standing up to follow him away from the farmhouse and across the gravel parking lot. He feels worthless. He feels like the hellspawn people back home in the village accused him of being. But he can’t bring himself to regret showing Skwisgaar the letter. His own happiness is a necessary sacrifice. Desperate and selfish as he is, love wins out. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


They reverse course, driving back up the 89 towards the mountains. For some reason, the return trip seems to go by a lot faster than the original. Roadside landmarks rush past them— the billboard ad for that personal injury lawyer, the giant fiberglass chicken sculpture, the hillside covered in litter and wildflowers —as a wall of blue spruce pine loom before them on the horizon.

Toki cups his knees, spine rigid, staring straight ahead through the windshield. The license plate of the car in front of them says ‘5UGAR BABY.’ He’s read it about a thousand times, repeating the phrase inside his head until the words lose all meaning. Neither of them has spoken since they left the orchard. All the windows are rolled up, sealing them in silence. 

Probably, one of them should call the manager to let him know they’re going to be late. There’s no way they’re going to make the drive up to Belinda’s cabin and then all the way back to Mordhaus before dark. Not that it really matters. The label’s deadline might as well be Arbor Day for all Toki cares about it now.

“Ams you gonna kicks me outta deh band?” he finally works up the courage to ask.

Skwisgaar flips down the sun visor, throwing a stripe of shadow across his face. There's a hint of stubble on his jaw, so fine and blond it would go completely undetected in a different cast of light. “What does _you_ think?” he says. 

The dashboard rushes up to hit Toki’s forehead. Before Toki knows what he’s doing, he’s folded in half, sobbing uncontrollably, his knuckles dragging on the rubber floor mat under his seat. “Please—” he hiccups. “Please don’t kicks me outta deh band—” 

“Stops cryink,” says Skwisgaar, never lifting his eyes from the road. 

“I- I don’t knows what else I woulds do,” Toki begs. “I’s never done any’ting else! I don’t haves nowhere else to goes!” He’s been with Dethklok since he was eighteen years old; It’s impossible for him to imagine his life without his bandmates, without Skwisgaar. With a seasick lurch, he realizes he would rather spend the rest of his life futilely mooning after a Skwisgaar who can never return his feelings, than try to make his home with anyone else. He would rather jump from the moving car and become another highway landmark. ‘Here Lies Toki Wartooth 1978-2007: Bitterly Greatness-Adjacent.’

“What makes you think I’s gonna kicks you outta deh band for tellings me deh trut’?” Skwisgaar asks him.

Head between his knees, Toki swallows the crying-snot pooling in the back on his throat. “I don’t knows.” He picks himself up. “Because I thoughts about _nots_ telling you? Because I’s a horribles porson?” 

“But you _dids_ tell me,” Skwisgaar says. They come out of the shadow of the mountains, and the sun pours in through the windows again. He flips up the visor, which is no longer doing him any good at this angle, and squints into the glare. He has oily skin, which makes him look younger than he is. For the first two years they knew each other, Toki still suffered from moderately bad acne, until Skwisgaar explained to him that trying to get rid of all the oil just made it worse. In this direct light, shine paints his t-zone, his eyelids, the bow of his lips. He looks a little like a Dutch Masters’ painting, and a lot like the kid on the _Stabburet Leverpostei_ package if he grew up to be the lead guitarist in a death metal band.

When he speaks again, his voice is so soft it sends a shiver down Toki’s spine. “I acks you befores, woulds you frees me from deh spell if you coulds. And now, yous proven dat you woulds.” 

Toki dries his eyes and they lapse into silence again.

If only he could travel back in time, and stop this whole thing from happening in the first place. A week ago, he’d been complaining to Belinda about Skwisgaar’s treatment of him, but now he’d give anything to have those sorts of problems. He’d blame her for ruining his life, but it’s a little bit like sticking your arm in a lion’s mouth and blaming the lion for biting your hand off. She _told_ him she was a mistress of Satan, exactly the kind his parents warned him about, and he made a cursed bargain with her anyway. 

They pass the exit with the picnic area, which means they’re a little over two hours from their destination. The rest of the journey will take them uphill through the pinewoods, as the sun sinks in the sky.

Maybe if Toki had just paid more attention, if he hadn’t been so lost in his own head, narrating all these insurmountable struggles to himself, he could have noticed that Skwisgaar had feelings for him a long time ago. Maybe if he’d been willing to do the actual work and incur the risk of acting on his own feelings, if he hadn’t seen the love spell as a way to basically skip all the hard parts— Maybe then, they could have fallen in love in the proper way. But now it’s too late. Now they’ll never be together, and it’s Toki’s own fault.

The future he allowed himself to envision for them was always a mirage. The only plausible future is this one: They’ll go back to Mordhaus and finish the album. They’ll record more albums, and go on more tours, until someday Dethklok will be over, and then they’ll retire. And they’ll part ways, having no further business with each other. Just a couple of guys who used to work the same gig. Toki will be just another one of the dozens of coattail-riding former-bandmates whose names the great Skwisgaar Skwigelf can scarcely be bothered to remember. And the week they spent together in the mountains will recede from memory, until it really might as well have been a dream. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s late afternoon when they pull into the clearing under Belinda’s cabin and park the car in the shade. 

Skwisgaar twists the keys out of the ignition and sits there, holding them in his fist for a minute, before opening the door and getting out. It’s warmer now than it was when they checked out this morning, rendering their sweatshirts almost inappropriate. 

Toki climbs out and paces around in a circle. His legs are stiff from spending most of the day in the car, pins and needles shooting up the backs of his calves. He is numb with resignation. It feels like all the blood has been drained out of his body. 

Murderface is going to be furious with them when he sees the Camaro. Toki grew up in a community that uses horse-drawn carriages, and can barely drive to this day, and even he knows the slick vintage sportscar is not an all-terrain vehicle. The wheel wells and treads are caked with black mud, and the sides are covered with hairline scratches. Under different circumstances, the thought of antagonizing Murderface would be funny, but now it just makes him feel empty and stupid. 

As Skwisgaar approaches the steps, Toki debates whether or not to follow him inside. On the one hand, it sort of feels like his responsibility, but on the other hand, he’s not sure he can bring himself to watch. 

Somewhere beyond the stone wall, the chickens are cackling. Skwisgaar pauses at the edge of the clearing, wreathed in speckled light. His hand closes around the wooden banister as he prepares to climb the shaded forest steps and ask the witch to cut Toki out of his heart forever. 

He turns around. “Wells? Dat’s it?” he asks. “Yous not even gonna tries to stops me?”

“Whats?” Toki squeaks.

Skwisgaar throws his arms open. “Says somet’ing!” he cries. “If you really loves me, den tells me why I shouldn’t goes up dere!” 

“But—” On cramped and stinging legs, Toki crosses the clearing. “Don’t you wants to?” 

“I don’t knows.” Skwisgaar sits down on the steps and buries his face in his hands. “I’m so scared of dis,” he says. “Of lovings you.”

The forest seems to hold its breath. Even the chickens have gone quiet. Soft coils of freshly-washed hair pour forward into Skwisgaar’s lap. The shampoo at the hotel they left this morning was supposed to smell like the blue spruce, a bit of a local gimmick, but it just left them smelling like car air freshener. Skwisgaar takes a deep breath, sitting up straighter, and tucks his hair behind his ears. 

He has beautiful ears, Toki thinks; Large, but not at all goofily so, and perfectly shaped, like the picture you’d find if you looked up ‘ears’ in an encyclopedia. What a thing to notice now— But Toki can’t help noticing them. It’s a shame Skwisgaar’s hair usually covers them up. 

“I hasn’t had to relies on anyone else forsa really long times,” Skwisgaar says. “And I knows dat if I stays like dis, my life ams gonna change; I’s never gonna be self-sukfishents, like I was befores, and dat ams gonna be really hards for me to accepts. But I had already starteds to comes to terms withs it, when all deh sudden you tells me dere am dis other poskibility. And now, I just don’t knows.”

Toki lowers himself onto the grass and crosses his legs. The ground is thick with dry pine needles. “Dis mornings,” he says, “I realizes somet’ing.” He waits for Skwisgaar to look at him, but it’s hard to continue without flinching away. He tugs at the grass in front of him. “Seeings you look so happies, watchings you talk about what you loves most, I realized dat I can’t acks you to stays tieds down to me.” The pain in his chest feels cleansing. He is fixed to drive the Devil out. “I don’t desorves you, Skwisgaar,” he says. “Yous so talentsed. Yous so specials. You shoulds be free of me, sos you can finds somebody who can apprekchiates dat, instead of havings all dese fucked up, poisonous feelings about it.” 

Scattering the clod of plucked grass in his hand, he looks up, determined to put on a brave face. Their eyes meet, and for a minute neither of them moves or speaks. Fragrant smoke issues from the witch’s chimney, becoming just visible over the tops of the trees. Both of them know that whatever happens next will mark them forever. They are poised at the threshold of fairyland— or at least, parked in its driveway. 

Skwisgaar shakes his head incredulously. “Yous _really_ gonna makes me says it, hah?” 

Toki’s courage falters. “Says whats?” he asks. 

Skwisgaar stands up and storms into the center of the clearing, joining Toki within the aperture of light. “Yous really gonna makes me says I’s _choosings_ to be stucks dis way forevers. Yous really gonna puts dat _all_ on me. Yous not even gonna argues for it, sos I can pretends to puts up a fight. Godsdamnit, Toki!” He throws his hands up in exasperation. 

“I… You… Whats?” Toki blinks.

“Whats deh fucks I tolds you?” Skwisgaar sputters, pacing back and forth like a tiger. “I tolds you you was my fuckings muse! And now yous just gonna sits dere on deh ground likesa lump and lets me pisses dat away just because I’s terrifieds of gettings close to anybody?” His mouth yanks into a frown, and before Toki has a chance to respond to any of this, he’s crying into the hem of his sweatshirt. “You greedies, selfish little baby! Looks at what deh fuck yous done to me!” He pulls the sweatshirt over his head, and for a moment he’s a crazy starfish of elbows, struggling to extract himself, before balling it up and throwing it across the yard. Underneath, he’s wearing one of those dollar store mutipack undershirts they picked up, which are always too short in the torso for him. 

Toki stands up, brushing the pine needles off his pants. “I just- I wants you to be happies,” he says. 

But Skwisgaar hasn’t finished pacing. “Whats you thinks I’ms gonna do, hah?” He gives a dry, miserable laugh. “Waits for deh _next_ porson who comes into my life likesa bolt of lightning, and den spends _another_ ten years gradually buildings deh capacity for intimacies withs _dem?_ ” 

“I- I don’t knows,” Toki stammers helplessly, eyes following him back and forth like a game of tennis.

“Don’t you get it?” says Skwisgaar. “It’s _you_ ; Yous _it_ for me, Toki. Dis amn’ts goings to happens to me agains!” Fresh tears sparkle at the corners of his eyes. The blaring direct sunlight is particularly unforgiving to the salty red state of his complexion. 

“I’m sorries,” says Toki. “I’m so sorries I puts you in dis sitsguation, but— I can’t tells you whats to do. You hasta choose.”

“Fucks you!” Skwisgaar snaps. He stomps over to the car, throwing the door open and muttering to himself, “I needs a fuckings cigarette.” 

Toki watches him, feeling painfully empty-handed. Should he be getting down on one knee, or something? Is that what Skwisgaar wants? The surreality of this reversal is making his head spin. Not knowing what else to do, he bends to pick up the discarded sweatshirt and walks over to the Camaro, tossing it in on the floor. 

Skwisgaar is sprawled across the driver’s side, one leg in the car, one leg out, as he lights up, leaning his head back like he’s in an advertisement. Sometimes it gets on Toki’s nerves how posed he can look, like every mundane activity is an opportunity for him to show off. But now, it doesn’t even seem like it’s on purpose. Maybe that attention-whore Skwisgaar is just a beautiful surface for Toki to project his feelings of inadequacy onto. The real Skwisgaar has been writing the world’s first death metal symphony, and he didn’t even tell anyone about it.

Toki stands over him, leaning against the side of the car. There’s a pressure on his tongue, to speak, but he doesn’t know if there’s anything he can say that will make things any easier. I love you, that’s easy. You’re the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. Your kindness probably saved my life. The look on your face when you were explaining to me what a _bariolage_ was made my heart feel like a hundred cuddling kittens. You have beautiful ears. 

You have the insatiable, bellicose ego of a Xerxes. You don’t seem to have any understanding or patience for the fact that other people aren’t as gifted as you are. Instead of just talking to me about your feelings, you put me through crazy obstacle courses and lash out at me in weird ways. You can be mean, _really_ mean. Really, _really_ , needlessly mean. 

I’d give anything to be worthy of you.

Skwisgaar taps his cigarette into the little built-in ashtray under the radio. There’s a pine needle caught in his hair. “I’m not… _normals_ , okei?” he huffs.

Toki watches the pine needle, waiting to witness its fate. “Whats you means?” 

“I can’t connects wit’ peoples,” says Skwisgaar, in a tone that conveys that putting any of this into words is an exorbitant and unreasonable tax on his person. “Dere ams likes, a fence. Between me and dem. Like, I can sees dem and hears dem, but. Dhey’s _over_ _dere_.” He gestures ‘over there’ with the cigarette. “Feelings all dis, for you. All at once. It ams too much, for me,” he says. “I’m sorries.”

“ _Yous_ sorries?” says Toki, hearing his own voice creak. “Why deh hell ams _you_ sorries? Dis whole t’ing ams my faults.” 

“It ams your fault,” Skwisgaar says wearily, “but it ams my problem.” He blows a spout of smoke in Toki’s direction. His eyes are dry now, and solemn. He finishes the cigarette and climbs out of the car, closing the door behind him. “But I knows what I hasta do.” 

“What ams dat?” Toki croaks, his heart in his throat.

Skwisgaar turns to face him, looking him up and down like they’ve just been introduced by some invisible third party. “Music ams deh only way I knows how to reaches out to peoples,” he says. “But when we forst played togethers… It was like deh forst time I ever felt someone reachings back.” He lifts Toki’s hair away from Toki’s shoulders and gathers it behind him, anointing him in some ritual known only to Skwisgaar himself. “It’s taken me all dem years,” he says, “but I slowly follows dat sound back to deh source, and I finds deh porson on deh other end of it.” He rocks forward, bringing their faces together— Not even kissing, just covering Toki’s eye socket with his cheek. “ _Dis_ ams where dat sound comes from,” he breathes. “Deh sound dat was born deh forst time we ever played togethers.” Love shakes him, his lips just barely scraping against Toki’s ear. “If she takes dis outta me, dere won’t be no Dethklok no more.” 

With a flash, Toki understands what Skwisgaar is trying to tell him. Skwisgaar’s feelings for him are inextricably bound up with Skwisgaar’s music; Trying to block out the former could have untold consequences for the latter. 

“Don’t do it!” Toki seizes hold of him. He feels like he’s going to vomit. “Oh gods, please no! Don’t do it!” He grabs Skwisgaar by the jaw with both hands, looking him in the eyes, as if he could peer straight through them to his extraordinary brain, as if he could check to make sure… “Yous _music_ ,” he gasps. “What if—? Nonononono, _nononononono—_ ” 

But he’s _already_ tampered with Skwisgaar’s brain once, hasn’t he? Toki’s vision blurs, sharp-tasting bile hitting the back of his throat. “Tells me—” he pleads. How could it have failed to occur to him before? He sobs into the thin fabric of Skwisgaar’s dollar store undershirt, legs buckling beneath him. “Tells me you hasn’t lost anyt’ing,” he says. “Dids you check? Are you sure it ams all dere?”

“Toki!” Skwisgaar grabs his shoulders, pulling him back. “Toki, looks at me.”

Toki sways, struggling to refocus. As the fog of panic clears, he finds Skwisgaar’s eyes again. They are blue-blue, not green-blue, or gray-blue, not flecked with anything other than blue. They are, to borrow a bit from Nathan, bluer than the bluest blue.

Skwisgaar taps his temple with two fingers. “It ams all here,” he promises. Smiling tearily, he kisses the bridge of Toki’s nose. “My music, everyt’ing dat I am— I don’t hasta compromise dat one bit, in orders to loves you,” he says. “Maybe, I didn’t knows dat before.” He takes a deep breath and releases it through his nose. “Sos.” He shrugs. “I guess dat settles it, hah?”

Toki’s heart squeezes.

“I’s choosings _dis_ ,” says Skwisgaar, taking Toki’s hands, with grim finality. “I’s gonna lets you keeps me dis way. Even d’ough it ams deh most terrifying thing I’s evers semi-willingly done. It ams only _semi_ -willings,” he glares, “because you leaves me no other ochkpin. Remembers dat, you stupids dildo.”

“I’m sorries—” Toki begins.

“Ja, boo-hoo, yous sorries.” Skwisgaar rolls his eyes. 

Toki swallows the rest of his apology. They’re really going to be together. Sure, it’s not the most conventional arrangement. But Skwisgaar is going to be his. Forever. _Semi_ -willingly. 

His lungs swell with wonder. “Do you trusts me?” he asks. 

Skwisgaar leans his elbows back against the roof of the car, considering this. “Hmmmmnnnn. I guess… I’s about as ready to trust you as I’s ever gonna bes wit’ anybody,” he says. He narrows his eyes. “ _Not_ because I thinks yous ekspeciallies trustworthies. I fuckings don’t. But because I’s known you long enough dat I knows your particular brand of dildosdom extremely wells.” He pushes off from the car, looking down at his feet. “And also because, today… when you hadsa chance to takes what you wanteds from me, without givings me no choice… you didn’ts.” And without looking up, he extends his hand, waiting for Toki to take it.

“What nows?” Toki asks, threading their fingers together. 

Skwisgaar squints into the trees. “We gotsa long journey ahead of us,” he says, in that oracular way he sometimes acquires after having a little too much to drink. Toki notices the pine needle still caught in his hair and plucks it out, flicking it into the grass. 

“I hate to interrupt,” says Belinda from the stairs, with a look that says ‘I love to interrupt’ on her face. “But since you two are here anyway, I have to ask: Would you mind doing me just a _liiiiittle_ favor?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The inside of the cabin is considerably more cluttered than the last time they visited, with open books spread over the tables and various articles of presumably occult provenance scattered across the black oak floor. Tallow candles, a sheet iron tinder box, braids of dried sweetgrass, horehound, licorice, juniper, and peppermint, a mortar and pestle, a set of bleached knuckle bones, sticks of white chalk. 

Skwisgaar straddles a golden lever harp almost as tall as he is, holding an ivory tuning key, as Belinda arranges her candles and incense in front of the fireplace. She has recently acquired a number of magical artifacts in an estate sale, including the harp. “A great find,” she explained, “but it’s useless for summoning, unless it’s perfectly in tune.” 

Toki watches them, as the cup of tea Belinda poured for him sits cooling, unsipped, on the coffee table. He is wary of consuming anything prepared by a witch; A possible over-correction for his lack of caution before. 

“I swear, I can’t even hear any difference,” she’s saying, as Skwisgaar plucks the highest string. “You can _really_ hear that?” she marvels.

“Ja, listens.” Skwisgaar closes his eyes and plucks the note again. “ _Dah— daaah—_ Dat one ams like, an eight’s of a tone highers.” He kneels on the floor, grabbing one of the loose chalks and scribbling something in his own improvised harp notation. “ _Daaah_.” He scrunches one eye, straining his larynx as he points at the ceiling. “Wells, oukay,” he says, “I can’t actually hits it wit’ my voice, because it ams too highs, but. You gets deh idea.” He gives the tuning key an infinitesimal turn, plucking the string as it tightens. “ _Dere_ you go,” he smiles, finally satisfied. “Dat’s it.” He sets the tuning key down on the table and passes his hands over the strings, playing a shimmering scale. 

“What egzaklies ams you gonna uses it to summons?” Toki asks from the sofa. At this point he feels like it’s his duty to be at least a little bit suspicious. 

“Don’t you worry about that, Sport,” Belinda waves him off with a bundle of sagebrush. 

“Everybodies ams always underestimates Toki.” Toki crosses his arms, indignant. “Thinkings I don’t knows t’ings about summonings. And, like, other stuffs. Well I does! One time, on accidents, Dethklok summons a real cool lake troll calleds Mustakrakish what terrorized deh entire nation of Finlands!”

“I know,” she laughs, tossing her mane of springy curls. “That’s what gave me the idea that you might be able to help me out. I actually just gave you guys a listen. Not my kind of music, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” 

Hiking her bright skirts above the clutter, she walks over to Skwisgaar and touches her index finger to the neck of the harp. “You did it,” she says. “It’s summoning-power is activated. That means it’s perfectly in tune.” 

Skwisgaar shrugs. “Ta-das,” he says, strumming a little melody that sounds like a waterfall of glitter. 

“That’s incredible,” she says. “Every tone has to be exact, or the magic doesn’t work at all.” She palms the ivory tuning key and slips it into a beaded pouch hanging from her hip. “Do you have any idea how rare that kind of perfect pitch is?” she asks, smirking at him in amusement.

Skwisgaar frowns. “Euuugh… no?” 

“I’ll tell you:” she says. “It occurs in about a hundredth of one percent of the population. And less than one percent of professional musicians.”

Skwisgaar looks like he’s getting ready to argue with her for a second, but he just dangles his arms at his sides. “Really?” he asks quietly. He looks almost embarrassed. It’s a fascinating contrast with the way he usually responds to praise, imperiously accepting it as his due. He is fond of insisting up and down that it’s pure practice, that _anyone_ could play like him if they just wanted it badly enough, that _everyone_ else is just being impatient and lazy. He is highly resistant to the notion that there is anything inherently special about him. Not only does it tend to contradict his self-mythology, but he seems to find the prospect actively disturbing. 

“If I didn’t know any better,” says Belinda, “I’d think maybe I wasn’t the only one here who had made some arrangements with the Prince of Darkness.” She laughs, clapping Skwisgaar on the shoulder. “Anway, I owe you one, Hans. Say, a spell of your choice, no charge?”

Skwisgaar plunks the low C-string, scoring his consideration of the offer with a suspenseful bassline. A slow smile spreads across his face. “Euuughhhhhhh, hypotechnickals sitsguation:” he says. “Can you guarantees to me dat Toki woulds be, let’s say, similarly unharmed, if you woulds be doings to him what you has already dones to me?”

Belinda grins. “Oh, I’d say he’s an excellent candidate for a classic love spell.”

Toki surges to his feet. “Whats?”

She bustles back over to the hearth and starts lighting the candles. “I take it you want the triple enchantment?” she asks Skwisgaar. “Same formula?” 

Skwisgaar stoops to pick up Toki’s lukewarm tea from the coffee table and takes a sip of it, looking Toki dead in the eye. “Dat’s right,” he says. “ _Ezacktlies_ deh sames.” 

“Are you sures? Dis ams really? Neskessaries?” Toki whispers, pleading with him.

“Oh ja, Toki,” says Skwisgaar. “I ams t’inkings dis ams _very_ negsgakaries.” 

Using a long wooden chalk holder, Belinda sketches a remarkably perfect circle in the middle of the dark wood floor, and places three burning candles within it. Satisfied with their triangular spacing, she uses the sharpened end of the chalk to draw three runic symbols at midpoints between each of the candles, and connects the dots into a six-pointed star. 

“Is you- Is you really gonna does it right now?” Toki sputters. 

“Why not?” She claps the chalk dust from her hands. “What are we waiting for?” 

“We did promiske deh managers we’d be back at six o’ clock,” Skwisgaar sing-songs. “Better hurries up sos we can be home in times for dinnersmeal.”

“We’s _not_ gonna be back at six o’ clock!” Toki protests, his voice getting so high he might just be able to hit that note on the last harp string. “It ams at least a four-hour drives!” A cold sweat has broken out across his back.

Belinda grabs a bundle of cypress and steps into the center of the chalk star. “Well,” she says, “the portents ain’t gettin’ any more favorable, and none of us is gettin’ any younger. If we do it now, your circle will probably close some time in the next forty-eight hours, and you’ll be ready to start planning the wedding by the weekend.” She dips the cypress in one of the flames, until the tips of the branches begin to smoke. “Oh, uh,” she gives Toki a wink. “You might wanna sit down for this, Sport.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Back down in the clearing, the birds are quiet and the light is already beginning to turn. At this hour, they’re just about ready to miss dinner.

Skwisgaar’s phone is ringing, but he just silences it and puts it back in his pocket. As Pickles would say, it’s very metal to show up drunk and late. Though no word on whether it’s metal to show up late under the influence of a love spell.

Toki hurls himself against the side of the Camaro. “I’ms dyings—” he moans. “I’ms _dyings—_ I’ms already deads— You _killeds_ me—” His cheek slides down the roof of the car. The steel is cool against his burning skin from being in the shade. 

As Belinda spoke her incantations, the three runes struck him like invisible lasers, branding themselves into his forehead, his chest, his groin. He can feel the enchantments penetrating him like a root system, thirstily seeking the groundwater of his feelings for Skwisgaar and plunging themselves in. His lungs are scalded with the smell of cypress. 

“Ams it, eh, remotely poskibles dat yous beings, porphaps, ahhhhhh _littles_ bit melodramatics?” Skwisgaar laughs.

“Oh, you bastards!” Toki cries, shielding his eyes in the crook of his elbow. “You- How coulds you does dis to me?” He pounds his fist on the roof. “Bitch tits! Motherfuckens, ass— Bitch! Dildos!”

“Pffft— Yous fines.”

“I’m not fines, I’ms _dyyyyings!_ ” 

Skwisgaar’s warm hands on his body, gently pulling him into an embrace, render Toki speechless. His legs fail him, and Skwisgaar grapples to catch him, leaning them both against the car. Toki’s mind is a white void of pleasure. He can feel himself imprinting on Skwisgaar’s voice, his scent, his hair, his skin, forming an instantaneous chemical dependency.

“ _Nnnnnfff_ — Ahhhhh—” Toki tries, with comic futility, to speak again, and Skwisgaar gently shushes him, rocking him like a child. 

All his admiration and envy, his hunger for recognition, his shame and frustration, his gratitude at being saved, at being chosen, his need to push the boundaries of his savior’s rare beneficence, his greed for _more_ : Everything is welling up within him, this raw font of emotions, and the roots are drinking and transuding it, filtering out the salts and the toxins, and refilling him with sweetwater. Distilling his scattered, contradictory impulses into a pure, concentrated feeling so powerful it seems like his heart is going to launch itself into the atmosphere and leave behind a crater of shimmering glass where his chest used to be. 

“You understands why I hads to does dis, don’ts you?” Skwisgaar asks. “You corners me in an unpossibles positions. I hads to levels deh playings field.” He sounds apologetic and desperate. “Knowing I’s gonna be bounds to you dis way, for deh rest of my life— it ams _terrifying_ , Toki.” His stubble rasps against Toki’s cheek as he rubs their faces together. “But now dat it ams mutuals… I can relaxes, wiffs you. It ams completely safes to- to- To gets close wiffs you. It amn’ts because I don’t trusts you, it’s just— I think maybe I needs dis— dis securities —in order to let someone… In order to finally…” He’s trembling almost as much as Toki is. “Does dat make sense?”

Toki is hanging from Skwisgaar’s neck like a monkey. “Don’t lets go me, don’t lets go me!” he pleads, finally finding his voice. 

Skwisgaar chuckles. “But I hasta lets go you to drives deh car.”

“Nooo, fucks deh car,” Toki whines. “I hates deh car. I hates everyt’ing! Just holds me you dicks!” 

Still holding him, Skwisgaar walks him backward around to the passenger side, and opens the door, awkwardly lowering Toki into his seat. Toki’s arms remain slung around the back of Skwisgaar’s neck, dragging him down. “Don’t lets go me!” says Toki. “If you lets go me, I’ll kills us both, I swear to gods!”

“Okei, Toki. Pulls youself togethers.” Skwisgaar stands up and closes the door. 

Toki is desolated, destroyed— something else with a ‘de-’ Nathan would say —until the object of his longing reappears in the driver’s seat a moment later. 

“Ohhh— Eeeeeeeaaaaaghh—” He thrashes and squirms as they pull out of the driveway. “I feels like my stomach ams fulla galloping unicorns. I feels like I’s gonna puke rainbows. Oh, my _hearts._ Oh, you bastards!” 

The lemon yellow Camaro hugs the winding mountain roads, carrying them through the pinewoods and back out onto the highway under a peach melba sunset. Toki languishes in the passenger seat, intermittently complaining and clutching his chest, until Skwisgaar flips on a Christian talk radio station in an attempt to drown him out. By the forty-five minute mark, Toki has settled down enough that Skwisgaar feels comfortable turning it off and resuming conversation.

“You okei?” he asks. “Still dyings over dere?”

Toki mashes his face against the window, hugging Skwisgaar’s balled-up sweatshirt which he retrieved from the floor. “Ams dis really what yous been feelings dis whole time?” he squeaks in disbelief. 

“Ja, eugh.” Skwisgaar rakes his bottom teeth over his top lip, eyes trained on the road. “Pretties much?” 

“How deh fucks you acts so normals?!” 

He shrugs. “‘No man ams free, who ams not master of himselfs.’” 

“Oh, great,” says Toki, sinking in his seat. “Who said dat, Martin Ambidextrous? Whatevers hims name ams.” He finger combs his tangled hair, still finding pine needles hours later. 

Skwisgaar’s eyes flick towards him. “Listens, Toki,” he says. “We’s goings home now. Yous gonna hasta gets it togethers.”

Toki strokes the sleeve of the sweatshirt against his cheek. “Das- You gots a whole weeks- Das amn’ts fairs! Ohhhh dis ams _bullshits_.”

“Wells,” says Skwisgaar, “yous gonna get yours laters, oukay?”

Later. Toki’s heart is pitter-pattering. That’s right: They have their whole lives ahead of them. Even if they can’t be together officially now, they are destined to end up together in the long run. “Oh!” he gasps, something Belinda said earlier fizzing through his brain. “Ams we really gonna gets married?” 

“Eugh, I thinks not,” says Skwisgaar. “Marriage ams dildos. And not metals.”

“It _coulds_ be metals!”

“Unlikelies.”

“Well it coulds be _nice_.” 

“Toki—”

“Don’t you wants me to be happies?”

“ _Toki!_ ”

“Ohhhhh I wants to haves a hygge wedding. Wiffs beanbag chairs and hot cocoas for everybody!” 

“Toki, if you says one more words to me abouts a hygge wedding, I ams going to drives dis car off dat fuckings cliff.” 

The silence is filled with the hum of the road.

Skwisgaar sighs, huddling over the steering wheel. “Aks me again in like two years, okei?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


At Mordhaus, it’s as if they’ve passed through the veil of fairyland and returned to the mundane realm. Everyone pretends to be mad at them for delaying the recording schedule, but it’s pretty obvious the rest of Dethklok were happy to spend the week goofing off in their absence. On the night of their return, their bandmates are wide awake and watching _Slumber Party Massacre_ on the big TV. They take their places on the sofa, grabbing beers and dodging Murderface’s popcorn-spittle, and it’s as if they never left. 

It turns out Skwisgaar really does have the ability to turn it off, and he expects Toki to do the same. He slips off to his room at the end of the movie before Toki has a chance to catch up with him, and at breakfast he pointedly sits next to Pickles, leaving a miserable lovestruck Toki to nurse his hangover at the other end of the table. Lingering glances are studiously ignored. Attempts to cuddle with him are firmly rebuffed. They are not, Skwisgaar explains, suddenly ‘boyfriends’ just because Toki got them mixed up in with a practitioner of the satanic arts.

In the recording studio, Skwisgaar is Skwisgaar. Reunited with his Explorer, he is as arrogant, virtuosic, and untouchable as ever. And if he seems a little more relaxed and happy— If his criticisms of Toki are a little less nitpicking and gratuitous— Well, the difference is subtle enough that the others don’t seem to notice or care.

On the third day of his torment, Toki is awakened by the shriek of a raven perched on his headboard, who deposits a cream colored envelope on his puffy, pillow-drunk face. Its mission complete, the raven dips its beak in the glass of stale water on his bedside table, and helps itself to a potato chip from an unfinished bag at the top of his waste basket. Grabbing Deady Bear and sitting up halfway, he opens the letter before his mind has a chance to psych him out by trying to anticipate its contents. 

‘Toki— 

Good news: Your circle has closed, and you couldn’t have asked for better results. I took some divinations, and everything is looking solid. 

I know I gave you a bit of a run-around— Sorry about that. But if you’re not satisfied with  this spell, then I’m afraid there’s just no satisfying you. It’s guaranteed to provide you with the deepest, purest devotion you’re going to find anywhere on the market, while seamlessly integrating all your real memories and personality traits. 

Now, it’s very uncommon to have two reciprocal love spells. I looked into it, and I could only find a few documented cases of this, but basically the two circles end up fusing together into kind of a figure-eight. Nothing to worry about, eight is a very prosperous number, but it’s interesting to me from a purely academic perspective. Let me know if you experience any unusual manifestations— Psychic connection, dream-sharing, anything like that. 

Otherwise, your star signs are looking great, and you have a lifetime of true love to look forward to. 

All the best,

Belinda

P.S. I made you a little diagram:’

∞

Toki groans and rolls over in his bed. That’s it then: The circle is closed. He is officially stuck this way forever. Completely, monogamously devoted to Skwisgaar for the rest of his life. His heart is pounding. He feels a wave of claustrophobia as the finality of it settles on him. The love is merciless in its hold on him. His bones ache with its ravenous magic. 

Well, you get what you pay for, Deady Bear quips at him. Though he may chafe at the restrictions the spell places on his life, he is now all the more aware of having done the same thing to Skwisgaar. 

Not that any of this would be so bad if they were actually _together_. The costs would be well worth it if he could just enjoy the benefits. But Skwisgaar is adamant about sticking to the program. They are to live and work as before, indulging their exquisite longing for each other only as strictly necessary, until this phase of their careers is over, at which point their relationship will become subject to renegotiation. 

Toki presses a pillow over his burning face. This all began because he was sick of pining and being ignored, and now he’s right back where he started, times infinity. 

He gets up, taking his morning piss and giving his mouth a token rinse. His hair is a mess, and he pauses in front of the mirror, thinking about trying to make himself presentable. The desire to look good for ‘his man’ might even be enough to put him off two-in-one shampoo one of these days.

But not today. 

He barges into Skwisgaar’s room, finding him semi-awake but still lounging in bed, and throws himself down on top of the fur coverlet, keening in agony. 

“I can’ts do it! I can’ts wait for Spains!”

Skwisgaar stretches and turns over to regard him with bleary amusement. His beauty makes Toki physically weak. Toki’s always found him magnificent-looking, but now his beauty is almost a substance, with volume and mass, that presses on Toki from every direction. 

“Marries me,” Toki says. 

Skwisgaar props himself on one elbow. “Dis agains?” He makes a lazy shooing gesture with his other hand. “I tolds you, I’s not at a point in my life when I’s lookings to gets married.”

“But why _nots?_ ”

“Toki, it don’t works dat way.” He blows a lock of hair out of his eyes. “You can has… feelinks, for somebody. Don’t means you gotta drops everyt’ing and marries dem.” He smiles. “Like I saids: once I’s not cools anymore, _ehhhhhh_... I considers it. But I’m still pretty cools.” 

“Yous torturings me,” Toki hisses. “Yous doings dis on porpose.” 

Skwisgaar throws the covers over him and snuggles him close like a giant stuffed animal. “A littles bit,” he teases. “But you desorves it.”

“I hates you,” says Toki, melting into his arms.

“Nooo…” Skwisgaar coos. “No you don’ts.” 

Toki is already too far gone to muster a retort.

It’s just so… _total_. The love fills every crevice like water. Every hurt, and fear, and bad memory is soothed by it. He drifts, his body warm and slack, suspended in a glowing ocean of absolute belonging and completeness. 

“I feels it deh same as you,” Skwisgaar whispers in his ear. “It ams easy to gets lost in it.” He squeezes Toki’s ribcage, indulging in the flood of endorphins that come every time they touch. “But you knows what else?” he asks conspiratorially. “I has somet’ing what ams calleds… _diskipline_.” He pulls away, throwing off the covers and flouncing to his feet, and leaves Toki to clutch the air after him, whining at the shock of cold. 

“Oh you _dicks—_ ” Toki squirms miserably in the sheets, kicking his legs. “Oh I hates you, I swears—” He watches, bereft and helpless from the bed, as Skwisgaar slinks across the room and unracks his guitar.

“You sees what ams happenings heres?” Skwisgaar asks. He strums to himself, closing his eyes and gently tossing his hair as though in the throes of a dream. Seating himself on the edge of the mattress, he leans over, his hair wafting against Toki’s cheek, and retreats before Toki can lunge to kiss him. “I has all deh power nows. You knows why?” He stops playing, stilling the strings with his hand. “Because I can controls myself. If you really wants to be mines equal, yous gonna hasta lorns how to control youself, too.” The corners of his lips twitch. “You knows what I recommends for dat?” A thorn of light glances off one of the Explorer’s chrome tuning pegs, as if the instrument itself were giving a flirtatious wink. 

Toki glares up at him. “If you says fuckings finger drills I swear to gods—”

“Awww.” Skwisgaar sits back against the pillows and coaxes Toki into his lap. “Listens to you complains,” he mocks. “Yous such a littles baby.”

Defenseless, Toki allows himself to be posed so that his back is flush with Skwisgaar’s chest. The Explorer rests against Toki’s stomach, its neck angling in his limp arms. 

“But yous _my_ baby,” Skwisgaar murmurs, kissing the crown of his head. 

He takes hold of Toki’s hands from behind, positioning his fingers over the frets. “Comes on. You can does it.” He taps out a quicksilver chord progression, gesturing for Toki to replicate it.

“You hasta lets me sleeps wiffs you.” Toki pouts. “Nobody hasta knows. Just lets me sleeps in yous bed.”

He can feel Skwisgaar’s pulse quicken against his back. Skwisgaar may be better at hiding it, but up close, it’s obvious how much the temptation is affecting him. “Tonights,” he says. “Tomorrows, you sleeps in yous own bed agains.” 

“Fines,” Toki agrees, already scheming how to extract further concessions. Taking the guitar from Skwisgaar’s arms, he copies the chord progression, and they pass the instrument between them, the drills increasing in difficulty. 

“Ugh.” Toki’s pinkie strains to reach a distant fret. “Yous fingers am so much longers den mine. It’s so unfairs.”

“Ezkuses, ezkuses.” Skwisgaar pokes him in the ribs. “You just needs to develops yous flexibilities. Gives me some trills. Hammers on, pulls off; Dere you goes.” He wraps his arms around Toki’s torso, nuzzling the back of his neck while stroking his belly.

“Tchhh! How’s I supposed to plays when you distracks me likes dat?” Toki asks, indignant. “I can’t focus!” It’s not that he doesn’t want the attention; It’s just that, he was on a bit of a roll with those difficult drills, and he’s half sure Skwisgaar is doing this just to sabotage him.

“Den don’t focus,” says Skwisgaar. His warm lips move against Toki’s shoulder. “Maybe you needs to _unsfocus_.”

Toki sighs. “But once I loses focus I can’t does it no more. I makes a mistake, because I gets norvous; And den I gets _more_ norvous because I mades a mistakes! It ams like a tornado, goings in a stupids circle.”

“Den _don’t_ thinks abouts makings mistakes. Just plays it.”

“Easy for you to says! You never _makes_ mistakes!”

Skwisgaar laughs. “Dat’s not true,” he says. “I makes mistakes all deh times, ekspeciallies lives. But if you just acts likes you did it on porpose, and keeps going, it amn’ts a mistake; Den it ams calleds ‘improvisations.’” 

Without warning, Toki bursts into tears, and Skwisgaar’s arms tighten reflexively around him. “What’s wrongs?” Skwisgaar asks him. “Hey. Come on, it’s alrights.” 

“I loves you,” Toki sobs. “Jeg elsker deg. I loves you so fuckings _much_. I loves you so much I can’t breathes. I loves you so much I can’t thinks. I loves you so much I needs another words for what I feels, because deh words I haves in two languages amn’ts enoughs.”

Skwisgaar’s smile glows against the back of his neck. “Words ams nevers enoughs,” he says. “Dat’s what music ams for.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wondering what Skwisgaar's symphony might sound like, it was inspired by [this](https://youtu.be/KRlZg90uUZ0?t=1253)


End file.
